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291 
converting down into arable has on many farms exceeded its just 
limits ; and that for the flock's health, and as an exercise- 
ground — particularly in wet weather — nothing can equal the 
natural pasture of the down. In breaking up, the practice is to 
pare and burn ; then follow roots, wheat, barley or oats, and 
seeds. After this course the downs require help, and, if once 
overcropped and impoverished, cannot easily be restored to their 
former condition. 
Almost the whole of a chalk farm is, with the exception of 
water-meadow which may be attached, arable, only a little pasture 
being kept about the house. The old rotation on the poorer soils 
was : 1. Summer fallow or turnips ; 2. Wheat ; 3. Barley or 
oats, according to the nature of the soil ; 4. Grass ; 5. Clover- 
ley or " old field." On the better soils, the old rotation was : 
1. Old field, or summer fallow, or turnips ; 2. Wheat ; 3. Barley 
or oats ; 4. Grass. The farm was not kept in good heart, nor 
were remunerative crops raised under such a system. After 
lying two years in grass, the ground required much cleaning 
before wheat. In a dry spring this might be done in time to get 
in early turnips, and of these there might be a plant, and the 
crop might be fed off (swedes were out of the question) in time 
for wheat. Here were many contingencies, which did not 
always turn out happily even on the lighter soils : on the heavier 
they seldom did, so that a fallow and the loss of a year were too 
often the farmer's necessity. Then, again, scientific agricul- 
turists objected to two white straw crops in succession, though 
practical ones did not ; all, however, acknowledged that the 
produce of the " old field " was scanty, and fit for nothing but 
to run the sheep over, so that here was another year well-nigh 
lost.* 
The change to the now general four-field course (1 . Swedes ; 
2. Barley or oats ; 3. Grass ; 4. Wheat) was intended to be, 
and indeed was, a great improvement. But this too, if exclu- 
sively applied, was not found to be generally suitable to the 
country, though it is still invariably followed on some of the 
lighter and better soils. Without water-meadows there was not 
enough sheep-food, and the swedes could not be fed off in time 
for the succeeding barley ; much farmyard-dung too was required 
for the wheat. To meet the first objection, a catch-crop of rye, 
vetches, or winter oats was inserted between the wheat and the 
swedes. But the second and chief objection has brought about a 
* Mr. Comely of Winchester had occasion to survey twice, in 1838 and 1846, 
the parish of St Laurence Woottou, near Basingstoke, containing 2000 arable acres. 
In the fomer year 560 acres were " old field," in the latter not one. Nothing can 
show more forcibly the intervening change, which was nothing less than the 
abolition of the summer fallow, and the gain of a year for a remunerative crop. 
