202 
Farming of Oxfordshire. 
activity required, less time for cleaning the land, and gi'eater 
advantages offered for cross-cropping than in other localities. If 
a crop of vetches is fed off with sheep, and the turnips which 
follow are also consumed on the land, the ground may be too 
highly dressed for barley, and oats are taken instead. Then 
after clover or beans the land is manured for wheat, and in the 
following August or September is planted witli mustard or 
turnips, and penned off. Tlie wheat stubble will then produce 
far better barley than if taken in the regular course. But this 
system cannot always be relied on ; the season may be late, the 
land may be foul, the stubble turnips may fail, or other hindrances 
may occur. Hence arises an irregularity of cropping, which is 
no proof of bad farming, but the contrary. It is the perfection 
of agriculture to improve the land while making it produce the 
most corn and meat in the shortest time, and at the most moderate 
expense. On some warm soils the four-course is too slow a 
machine to produce this, and the great men of the east may 
graft into their system a very useful sprig of green cropping from 
tlieir Oxfordshire brethren. 
The cropping in the Ciiiltern district is usually the four-course : 
turnips, barley or oats, seeds, and wheat. Occasionally oats 
follow wheat, but if this may be tolerated on some good lands, 
on this poor soil it cannot be too strongly reprobated. This 
remark does not apply to the gravelly soils near the Thames, nor 
to some of the more fertile valleys, but to the chalks and poor 
clays which form the main features of the distiict. Perhaps it 
would be difficult to find a hill farm more advantageously culti- 
vated than at Assenden, where oats or barley succeed wheat. 
The swedes are grown with a liberal allowance of superphosphate 
and ashes in addition to farmyard manure. The other turnips 
are preceded by vetches or rye, all of which are consumed by 
sheep, eating a large quantity of beans. A portion of the turnip 
crop is removed to the wheat-stubbles, which are all folded over, 
])efore being ploughed for the next corn crop. A few early 
turnips are fed oft in time for wheat, which may be followed 
either by barley or by clover. There is a great extent of sainfoin 
on the liills, and in some parts wheat is sown after a naked 
fallow. Beans are planted instead of clover, while oats are 
gi-own after the seeds, which occasionally lie two years. 
On the mixed soils extending from the foot of the chalk hills 
to the north of Oxford, the Norfolk rotation, or a modification of 
it, is most common. Yet in many parts a five-course is prac- 
tised, oats or barley succeeding wlieat. When this is the case, 
the wheat-stubble receives some dressing, mostly from ewes being 
folded on it at night : or it may be ploughed up immediately 
after harvest, and something sown on it to make a little feed, which 
