Influence of Climate on Cultivation. 
161 
r^ e-grass may be said to cause one of the peculiar differences 
between the rotation of Norfolk and that of the north and west 
of the island. This is a valuable pasture plant in Scotland and 
the West of England. In these parts the climate promotes its 
continuous growth throughout the summer. As it is cropped it 
tillers freely, sending out fresh stems and roots, and occu})ying 
the land to the exclusion of weeds of all kinds. It stores up 
within the soil organic matter, which yields on decomposition 
abundant food for other plants. 
Pasturing seeds for two years is very generally regarded as a 
safe and sound system of maintaining fertility in Scotland and 
the West of England. Such a practice is usually prescribed in 
leases as well calculated to fertUize the soil and husband its 
resources : of course this is only done to advantage on easy loams 
which maintain grasses in a growing state. Tenacious soils 
seldom support good grasses a second year, and then only when 
the indigenous kinds come up; for they seem to be unfitted for 
rye-grass in consequence of the treading of the ground by cattle 
or sheep being inimical to the healtliy functions of the roots. 
Pasturing seeds for two years may be regarded, in a lesser 
<legree certainly, as improving soils in the same manner as con- 
suming on the land a crop of turnips for two vears in succession. 
The economical advantage of pasture being tliat it involves no 
expense in manure and cultivation. 
Rye-grass is an inferior plant in all the drier districts of 
England : being a shallow-rooted plant it is ill-provided for main- 
taining itself in vigour during the heats of the summer months. 
Clovers or other plants with deep roots have an immense advan- 
tage over it in producmg forage; but the want of good artificial 
grass to take full possession of the surface soil in Norfolk, and 
maintahi its growth in summer, allows other useless and unpro- 
fitable plants to spring up. Instead of the land improving in 
fertility by two years' pasture it becomes filled with weeds as the 
clovers thin out ; this, it appears to us, is the principal reason 
why the four-course shift has been so long followed in Norfolk, 
and the five-course in the West of England and Scotland. This 
forms a dividing ridge between tlie two systems ; and the spirit 
of each, as exhibited in other farm practices, pursues somewhat 
opposite courses — which it is our object to trace. 
The four-course shift is necessarily much more expensive than 
the five-course. Though the climate of Norfolk is inferior to that 
of the north or the west for turnips— the most expensive crop that 
is cultivated, still a fourth must be given ; another fourth must 
be sown out annually with seeds ; one-half of the land also is 
annually under the exhausting influence of white crops : all which 
involves not only great expense in cultivation, but in manuring. 
VOL. XX. JU 
