158 On Preparation for the Wheat Crop in Cornwall. 
of the rain and Dalton gauges would be usefully varied, by 
placing the latter at different depths, as at 1, 2, 3, and 4 feet or 
more below the surface, and filled with a diversity of soils, whence 
information may be expected to arise of great practical value to 
the agriculturist. 
JosiAH Parkes. 
7, Great College-street, Westminster, 1844. 
IX. — On Preparation for the Wheat Crop in Cornwall. By 
J. H. Tremayne. 
The agriculture, perhaps the soil, of Cornwall is peculiar. We 
have little pasture land, properly so called. The upland is not 
suited to permanent pasture ; our valleys generally (particularly 
in the west) not much wider than the streams that run through 
them ; but the soil is of such a nature, that after a course of hus- 
bandry the land acquires a firm hard sward, sooner than any I 
ever saw in other parts of England. We may call it, therefore, 
almost all convertible land — and it is treated accordingly. The 
course of husbandry has been — I speak not now of the old system 
which once prevailed, when corn crops were taken till the land 
was exhausted, and then left for years to recover, but of the later 
system, which is even now enjoined by our leases — the course of 
husbandry has been to take not more than two corn crops in suc- 
cession, seeds being sown with the last. It is then pastured for 
three or four years (the grass once cut for hay in the first year), 
and then broken up again for wheat. Of late, however, a better 
spirit has arisen — green crops have been introduced — 'tlie system 
of alternate corn crops and green crops adopted ; on farms where 
twenty years ago one saw only a small piece of turnips adjoining 
the homestead, one now sees large fields of Swedish and other 
turnij)s drilled, following the wheat crop, and turning out the 
barley stubbles for the subsequent pasture in a state of clean- 
ness utterly unknown before. The new system, however, calls for 
a change in tlic application of manure. Under the old, nearly 
the whole manure (chiolly lime, from about 80 to I'iO Winchester 
bushels per acre) was ajjplied for the wheat crop — mixed, per- 
haps, with the small (juaniity of very badly made dung which the 
farm afforded — or (if the farmer chose to apply this dung to a 
favourite piece of grass land) mixed only with eartli fiom ridges 
ploughed in the fields. Under the new or alternate system, if 
the lime is applied to the wheat, and dung or bones or other 
j)urchased manure ap])lied to the turnips, there is not enough 
taken out for the lime — and if tiie lime is discontinued, it is 
generally supposed the crop of wheat will be ileficient. 1 have 
long thought on this — and, moreover, thought that our general 
