Farming of Oxfordshire. 
203 
is eaten off ; the sheep probably receiving an allowance of hay 
in addition. On one farm at Dorchester half of the land that 
comes for fallow is planted witli peas and oats, which are re- 
moved in time to sow stubble turnips. These are penned off 
and followed by barley — thus making a four-course, and gaining 
an extra crop on one-eighth of the land every year. In cases 
where swedes are kept until May for the sheep, the season for 
sowing spring corn is passed before the swedes are cleared : 
then forward turnips are sown and fed off in the autumn. The 
land is planted with wheat and succeeded by a crop of barley, 
which is always of good quality. Other slight variations are to be 
met with, but, generally speaking, the friable soils are cropped 
as follows — l-4th wheat, l-4th barley, l-4th turnips, l-8th clover, 
l-8th beans. Care is taken to reverse the beans so that clover 
comes but once in eight years. This is the course on the 
majority of soils, and with moderate farming is decidedly the 
best, and one which finds great favour with landlords, being 
mostly inserted in the tenants' yearly agreements. In some of 
the uninclosed parishes the following abominable three-field 
system is adopted : — First, wheat ; secondly, oats ; thirdly, 
beans or clover, and then wheat again, There are no turnips in 
this rotation, and no fallow unless the land is so foul that it can 
grow corn no longer, and then the beans are omitted, and the 
land is cleaned. It is needless to add that when fields are en- 
closed, such a barbarous course is qviickly altered, but it is one 
of the evils of open lands, that parishes are cropped by tradition, 
and all farmers are bound to follow the custom, however absurd 
or antiquated it may be. On some clay soils the old course is 
still adliered to, of two crops and a fallow, viz., first fallow, then 
wheat, thirdly beans. In other places the beans are followed 
by oats, or wheat may be planted after the beans, and oats suc- 
ceed the fallow, in which case clover is sown with the oats and 
ploughed up for wheat next year. On a very considerable 
extent of Oxfordshire clays, there is nothing but naked fallows 
for wheat. If any green crop is attempted it is mostly vetches. 
A few turnips and a small patch of mangolds are all the roots 
grown. 
On the stonebrash one-tenth of the arable land may be con- 
sidered to be in sainfoin, while' the rest of the ploughed ground 
is one-fifth wheat, one-fifth turnips, one-fifth barley, and two-fifths 
grass. In a few instances oats or peas follow the wheat, but the 
land without extra dressings is too weak to bear this, and after 
two years' grass is sure to become full of couch. On the better 
land the seeds lie one year instead of two, and with moderately 
good farming, this is long enough. Very few beans are grown, 
and little red clover. The seeds are a mixture of trefoil, Dutch 
