Farming of Oxfordshire. 
201 
sidering the average produce of corn, the crops of this year, espe- 
cially the wheat, are not taken into consideration. The yield of 
wheat is so miserably deficient, that no increase in price can 
give a good return per acre. Owing to the continuous rains in 
the autumn of 1852, some farmers sowed no wheat, and many 
others not more than half the usual quantity. In one parish 
containing 1100 acres, the area sown with wheat was no more 
than 40 acres, which produced little above 40 quarters. To 
men so situated, the present high prices are of no avail : many 
have little wheat to sell, while some have even to buy their seed- 
corn. The crops of spring grain are a fair average, but none of 
them yield so largely as was anticipated. 
The vear just passed has been an unfavourable and expen- 
sive season to the agriculturists of this county. A cold and 
backward spring retarded the growth of green crops, and many 
lambs then suffered from an insufficiency of food. The hay 
season was wet and tiresome in the extreme, a large amount 
of labour being expended with no adequate result, the hay being 
damaged in quality, and a great part of it eventually washed 
away. Fallows just ploughed speedily presented the appearance 
of a meadow. The turnips are not a heavy crop, and were with 
great difficulty and at a heavy cost only half cleaned, after 
repeated hoeings, while the harvest was wet and most protracted, 
a large portion of the com being carted in wretched condition. 
There has been a good supply of grass since June, and dairies 
have produced a large quantity of butter ; but now the cows have 
to subsist on the w^ashed and badly-harvested hay, the milk 
falls off. and little butter is being made this winter. 
It is by no means an easy task to give a concise or general 
view of the course of cropping adopted throughout Oxfordshire. 
There is no particular svstem of agriculture in the county, and 
several different rotations may be found in the same parish and 
also on the same farm. One gentleman when asked w hat was 
his system of cropping, answered, " Anything but regularity." 
Nor is this irregular system to be condemned. AMicn land 
varies so much and so rapidlv as it does in Oxfordsliire, it is 
absurd to prescribe one course for an estate, or even for a large 
mixed soil farm. An intelligent and responsible farmer should 
be allowed considerable licence in the management of his land, 
and be permitted to fairly crop it as seasons and circumstances 
dictate. In counties like Norfolk, where the four-course is 
almost universal, and where there is always a winter fallow for 
turnips, there a regular system might always be adopted. But 
in some parts of this county, on the sandy and gravelly loams for 
instance, and where green crops are taken before turnips, and 
mustard and stubble turnips are extensively grown, there is more 
