298 
On the Farming of the 
facilities for eartliing up, and the protection thus afforded them, 
come to perfection some weeks earlier than those in ordinary 
market-p^arden grounds. Large quantities are thus grown, and 
sent to Leeds and the other large towns for sale, where they meet 
with a ready market. 
On those alluvial soils bordering the new red-sandstone, and 
within the influence of the rivers which have been previously 
mentioned as forming their limits in the West Riding, in addition 
to the usual corn and green crops, flax, teazles, woad, and carrots 
enter largely into the rotations. Mustard is also frequently 
grown, and in a favourable season, when well housed, is not only a 
paying crop in itself, but an excellent preparative for the suc- 
ceeding wheat crop. In the neighbourhoods of Goole and Selby 
potatoes are cultivated very extensively on the better portions of 
the warp soils ;* and as these inland ports afford great facilities 
for shipping this produce to the manufacturing districts, as well 
as to London, and also for the return of manure, this root alter- 
nates on the same land with an oat or wheat crop ; and is not 
unfrequently grown many years in succession. I was informed 
not long ago by a respectable person at Selby, that for some 
years past his annual profit from potatoes, out of one field of 
nearly 4 acres, has been about lOOZ. ; and his is no solitary in- 
stance. Two crops a-year are grown, and the plan adopted is 
this : — when the crop from which the sets are selected in the 
autumn is lifted, care is taken to house the seed-sets, and when 
indications of sprouting begin, to encourage the growth of the 
germ in a healthy state by spreading them out in a dry place. 
The land being well prepared and highly manured, the sets are 
carefully planted in February, without rubbing off the sprouts ; 
and this forms the early and principal crop, which is ready 
for market in June. From this crop a sufficient number of the 
smaller potatoes are reserved, and the land is again set with these 
as soon as the first crop is off, which produce the sets for the main 
crop of the succeeding year. The early crop usually realizes 
from 20/. to 30/. per acre, according to circumstances, and is 
• The really warp soils of this Riding are not so extensive as are sup- 
posed. The great proportion is in the East Riding. Much error, I believe, 
exists as to the true origin of this soil : it is usually supposed to be the 
alunninous earth washed from the bottom, but it is now proved by the 
observations of Ehrenberg, and corroborated by English microscopists, 
to be the deposit of immense quantities of infusorial animalcules. In 
all rivers whose course is slow and deep, animalcules breed in immense 
myriads, and as both the salt and fresh water have each their distinct 
inhabitants, which "cannot live in the other water, so on the flow of the 
tides, and the mingling of the salt water with the fresh, the animalcules 
of both are destroyed, and their bodies, with their siliceous coverings, 
deposited in such masses, as in many of the continental rivers to almost 
render the mouths of them unnavigable in a short time. 
