Farming of Oxfordshire. 
207 
cially called " rump," while the clays are swarmed with starve- 
acre (^Ranunculus arvensis), and the clivers or burrs [Galium 
aparine), which are very troublesome to separate from the grain 
when winnowed. 
When no green crop is taken before turnips the stublile is 
commonly ploughed up between Michaelmas and Christmas, 
and may be stirred twice in the spring before it receives the 
seed-earth. Tliere is nothing peculiar in the method of cleaning 
the fallows: if foul, they receive the usual number of draggings, 
harrovvings, and rollings. Sometimes the couch is carted off, 
and formed into a compost with lime, but more generally burned 
on the land. In the south of the county, where it is usual to 
manure for wheat, little farmyard dung is applied for turnips ; 
and the dressings of artificial manure are by no means heavy, 
the cost rarely exceeding 1/. per acre : 1 cwt. of guano, 1 to 
2 sacks of bones, and 2 cwt. of superphosphate, mixed with 10 
or 20 bushels of ashes, is the proportion most frequently given. 
Some turnips are grown with ashes alone, and very often a fair 
crop of swedes is attained without any dressing, natural or 
artificial : this is on land in high condition, and naturally fertile 
and of good staple. Some farmers have ploughed their land 
when clean only once, and that very deeply, in the autumn, and, 
after well scarifying in the spring, drill their seed with some 
artificial. Some good farmers manure their land intended for 
swedes in the winter with 10 or 12 loads of long dung, and then 
drill in with the seed 2 cwt. of superphosphate and 15 bushels 
of ashes. On the stonebrash the land is ploughed rather deeply 
before winter, and twice across in the spring. The manure is 
carted from the yards at convenient seasons into heaps, turned 
over, and applied to the land in May or June. The bones, 
superphosphate, and ashes are often added when the seed is 
sown. Throughout the Cots wold range, the banks, roadsides, 
and borders are constantly pared for ashes. Similar treatment is 
used to prepare the land for white turnips : these are mostly 
grown after corn or green crops, except those that are intended 
to be fed off early for wheat, and these are sown in May. In 
consequence of early swedes being so subject to mildew, it is not 
often that they are drilled before June, the first three weeks of 
that month being considered the best of the season. Most of 
the turnip crop is drilled on the flat from 16 to 22 inches apart, 
a few extendins: the distance to 24 inches. 
Baulking or ridging is practised in some instances, but there 
is still some extent of turnips soion broadcast, though for what 
reason it is difficult to conjecture. Ridging is practised to 
a large extent in the neighbourhood of Chipping Norton and on 
the red soils of the north. The ridges are 27 inches apart, and the 
