as Stihstitides fen- Turnips. 
26^ 
sheep. I ahvaj-s have a breadth of cabbages which supplies me 
with food during tlie very often trying months of June, July, 
and August. In cultivating clay soils intended for roots, all 
ploughing should be done in the autumn, and only scarifiers, 
drags and harrows be employed in the spring." 
In the Wold districts, and on light soils generally, swedes 
and turnips are usually accounted too valuable to be displaced. 
Fed on the land by sheep, they are the foundation of good hus- 
bandry, especially when the animals consume oilcake or some 
other auxiliary food. It should not be forgotten that Thousand- 
headed kale may be made to serve the same object. Mr. C. 
Kent, a large occupier of land in the Dorset chalk district, con- 
siders kale " a good and perfect substitute for swedes and turnips 
on all soils liable to club-root." He gi-ows over 100 aci'es of 
it, but chiefly after catch crops. 
Taking another large Wold farm in a different district, Mr. 
T. R. Hulbert, of North Cerny, Cirencester, occupies one contain- 
ing 790 acres of arable land, devoted 45 acres to catch crops, 35 
of which were consumed green, and 10 acres converted to silage. 
Again, Mr. R. AV. Hobbs, another light land farmer of the same 
county (Gloucester), grows not only the whole of the turnips, but 
mangolds and swedes extensively after catch crops. Mr. Hobbs 
says : — 
" I require a large quantity of rye, vetches, &c., for my ram lambs in the 
summer, and get what roots 1 can after them. I have planted more rye 
than usual this season, with the intention of converting a large portion of it 
into silage." 
Surely it is well worth pausing here to consider how vastly 
the national wealth would be increased if farmers of light land 
more generally followed Mr. Hobbs' example by growing two 
ci'ops instead of one in the root year. Out of 153 acres that 
came into course last year, he carried out this system with 127, 
leaving only 26 acres not preceded by a winter crop. The flocks 
and herds of the kingdom might be increased to a prodigious 
extent by the adoption of such a wise policy, with very slight 
additional outlay. 
Mr. Bernard Dyer, B.Sc, in a paper read by him at the 
Farmers' Club on November 5, 1888, dealt with the scientific 
aspect of this matter as follows : — 
" The greater part of a green crop — say from 80 tn 90 per cent, of its 
weight when cut— consists of water. The remaining dry matter consists 
mainly of carbonaceous material derived from the air. Of this carbonaceous 
matter some is removed when the crop is cut, and some — a heavy weight 
per acre — remains in the soil to decay in the form of roots and root fibres, 
adding to the vegetable mould piesent in the soil. But the dry matter in a 
