Continuous Corn Growing. 
63 
per acre is a high rent even for the deep fertile land of Blunsdon, 
;md for about 40.s-. land of fair quality, well drained, and in large 
rectangular enclosures, can be procured in many parts of England 
and secured, it is to be hoped, to an enterprising tenant, either 
with a twenty years' lease or an engagement to obtain remunera- 
tion for unexhausted improvements, or better still with both. 
The system of farming described in this Report, if it is to be 
followed elsewhere with the successes which have been secured 
at Sawbridgeworth and Blunsdon, must be carried out amidst 
similar favourable conditions. 
Steam-power is a sine qua nan; without it the occasional 
deep-stirring and thorough autumn cultivation, so essential for 
vapidly obtaining a suitable seed-bed and eradicating weeds, 
could scarcely be secured. The use of steam in its turn obviously 
requires large rectangular fields, deep drainage, absence of trees 
and landfast stones, and more capital than at present is pos- 
Isessed by most of the occupiers of small clay -land farms. 
A deep and rather retentive soil is most favourable for the 
system. The thinner limestone formations and porous friable 
soils, unlike the clays, do not contain such a mine of varied 
plant-food which can, in great part, be rendered available by 
deep thorough cultivation. Nor do they retain, with compara- 
tively little waste, the more soluble constituents of plants, 
whether elaborated in the soil or applied in the form of portable 
manures. The system, it is urged, is not self-supporting : from 
foreign sources fertilizers must continue ' to be obtained ; guano 
deposits will be used up. But, practically, the supplies of 
phosphates and nitrates are almost inexhaustible. 
A dry climate is also a necessary condition of successful con- 
tinuous corn growing. Amidst the frequent mizzling showers 
of the extreme south-western counties of England or Ireland, or 
in many parts of Cumberland and Westmoreland, with their 
rainfall of 60 to 70 inches, it would be futile to extend corn 
growing, or reduce the area of the roots and grass which, in such 
moist districts, thrive and pay. 
Still another condition would have to be secured, namely, the 
permission of the landlord to pursue a system of cropping, which 
has hitherto been almost universally proscribed, which is opposed 
to custom, inconsistent with the accepted principles of good 
farming, and supposed to exhaust and deteriorate the land. A 
longer continuance and wider multiplication of the experiences 
of Messrs. Prout and Middleditch will, doubtless, be required to 
remove many of the prevailing opinions relating to land-tenure : 
amongst other things, to establish the inutility of most of the 
restrictive cro])ping clauses which encumber our agreements, to 
