18 
Report on the Agriculture of Belgium. 
for tliem ; but they are usually wheat or barley, flax, colza, and 
tobacco. The crops for home use are potatoes, rye (or a 
mixture of rye and wheat), oats, clover, and turnips and carrots 
as catch-crops. 
Commencing, say, with potatoes, the small farmer will after- 
wards grow two or three white crops in succession, and get in 
addition a catch-crop of turnips after rye (invariably), some- 
times sowing carrots in wheat or flax. After a certain number 
of these crops, varying generally with the quantity of manure he 
can obtain, but sometimes determined by a crop being excep- 
tionally bad, the land has an " ameliorating " crop of clover 
sown in oats, wheat, or flax, or, in the Campine, frequently in 
colza. Tliis clover remains one year, in which it is cut two or 
three times, sometimes four, and another similar succession of 
white crops is taken, when the restorative influence of potatoes is 
substituted for that of clover. One other practice is also 
observed, namely, the most valuable selling crops, such as wheat, 
flax, or colza, are always taken after the ameliorating " crops 
of potatoes and clover. 
Such a description of the rotation of crops on the small 
Flemish farms may not appear so symmetrical as a tabulated 
statement of several courses, each extending over 7, 8, or 9 
years, and having the same essential characteristics of potatoes 
at each end and clover in the middle ; but it is infinitely more 
true. Although it is impossible to give a more accurate idea of 
the course of cropping pursued by the generality of small farmers, 
there are large farmers who pursue a definite system of better 
character ; but the practice of taking two or three white crops 
in succession is as much an integral part of the national system 
of husbandry as la petite culture itself. In the Pays de 
Waes, where the small farming is smaller than elsewhere, and 
the land is better, the mode of cropping is more continuous 
and systematic ; and the following shift with its variations may 
almost be regarded as a local custom, differing only in this 
respect, that still another white crop (usually rye) may be taken 
in either or both series between potatoes and clover ; but the 
best farmers are generally known by the shortness of their 
rotations, because that implies fewer corn crops taken in suc- 
cession : — 1, potatoes; 2, wheat and carrots; 3, rye, followed 
by turnips ; 4, oats and clover ; 5, clover ; 6, flax and carrots ; 
7, barley or rye, followed by turnips ; 8, buckwheat or rye ; 
9, potatoes again. But even here, although we have a regular 
succession of crops, its elements consist of one year potatoes, 
three years white crop, one year clover, three years white crop, 
and the ninth year returning again to potatoes. The succession 
of white crops is accompanied by a regular increase in the 
