Light-Land Farming. 
103 
barley ; 3rd, seeds made into hay ; 4th, pasture ; 5th, wheat ; 
6th, oats, and then sainfoin for several years. The yield of 
wheat is computed at 17 bushels per acre, barley from 20 to 30 
busiiels, oats from 40 to 50 bushels, but some farmers who apply 
manure to their roots get better crops than these. Tlie present 
mode of manuring the dead, sleepy land on the upper oolite is to 
pare and burn sainfoin lea, then to take a crop or roots — often 
without dung — to be consumed on the land, and thereafter to 
sow barley with seeds, then wheat, roots again, then barley, and 
lastly grass. The want of manure is tlie cause of the worthless 
crops so often seen on this kind of land, and also on the stone- 
brash of the same formation, and many of the farmers of the old 
school, both on the oolite and upper chalk, give no manure to 
their roots at all, except what is made by the sheep pasturing on 
the ground previously. The superior advantage of superseding 
these old-fashioned rotations by the right course is, that not only 
are the root crops well dunged, but they are also eight years apart ; 
and it also gives the opportunity of growing wheat every two 
years, if the land is of the best quality, and, if not, barley and 
oats can be substituted ; and further, by consuming a considerable 
proportion of the clover and roots in house-feeding, there is ob- 
tained with the straw as much manure as will go over one-half 
the farm every year. As the upper chalks and oolites are so 
much alike in many of their agricultural characteristics, it is 
unnecessary to go into detail regarding the cultivation of the 
different crops, as that has already been done when treating of 
the former. 
Cultivation of Trap on Whinstone Soils. — Fifty years ago the 
light-trap soils of Scotland were almost in a state of nature. The 
rotation, such as it was, consisted then of successive crops of 
oats and barley, as long as the yield exceeded rent and expenses, 
and when it failed to attain this it was thrown out of cultivation 
and left to recruit itself by the natural agency of pasturage. 
Occasionally a bare summer-fallow was given when a field became 
completely overrun and matted together by couch-grass ; but in 
general this w-eed was not viewed with the same detestation as it 
is now, for after a field had borne several crops of oats without 
any attempt at cleaning it became grass-prorid, and consequently 
was the more easily laid down to natural pasture. The intro- 
duction of bone-manure about 30 years ago gave the first impetus 
to the improvement of the light soils of Scotland, and since then 
they have all been brought into systematic and successful cul- 
tivation, so that now oats and turnips are grown nearly a thou- 
sand feet above the level of the sea, and indeed wherever as much 
soil can be got as will cover the ploughshare. 
By far the most general rotation pursued in all the light soils 
