Report on the Agriculture of Belgium. 
41 
(4) oats witli clover, (5) clover, (6) wheat, returning: ajrain to 
roots. In some districts, especially near Courtrai, clover is sown 
with flax ; and as that crop requires the land to be in very good 
condition, it is often sown immediately after roots. If the 
climate will not allow a "simultaneous" crop of carrots to yield 
a payins; produce, of course nothing better than clover can be 
sown with it. But the Belgian farmer takes care to have his 
revenge afterwards. As an illustration, we give the following 
course, which is pursued on a farm that has been quoted as an 
exceedinglv good one in two or three English works on Belgian 
Agriculture: — (1) Flax with clover, (2) clover, (3) wheat or 
barley, (4) rye, (5) colza, (6) wheat, (7) rye, (8) oats or barley, 
and (9) roots or oats ! 
The question will be asked, is this practice successful? The 
best answer is, that the most advanced farmers have abandoned 
it, and now farm either on the Norfolk four-course system, — the 
root-course consisting of sugar-beet, — or a five-course in which 
three white crops are grown (one before roots and two after), or 
a nine-course, consisting of the other two taken in succession. 
The cause and effect of the ordinary practice are easily indi- 
cated. The cause is cupidity, and the consequence is complaint. 
The wheat is laid ; there is an abundance of straw and compara- 
tively little grain ; and rye or mixture must therefore be 
«:rown instead of wheat. The best farmers have discovered 
that after clover or roots wheat is better than after another white 
crop ; and as the cultivation of sugar-beet yields as large a 
profit as corn, they are at last reconciled to a fallow course of 
roots once in four or five years. The cultivation of sugar-beet 
has therefore completely altered the best farming of this division 
of Belgium ; and the rapid increase recently noticeable in the 
number of sugar-factories shows that the improvement is being 
more widely extended. 
4. Grass-land. — Under this head we include only the pastures 
and meadows of farms generally, excluding the feeding-land and 
flooded meadows in the river-valleys. The management of this 
grass depends very much upon whether the stock on the farm 
are dairy cows or feeding beasts. In the former case a portion 
of grass, consisting in the smaller farms of the border-strips of 
arable fields, will be reserved as a bite for the cows during their 
"outing"; the rest will be mown in July, and the aftermath 
soiled." Great care is taken to keep such grass in good con- 
dition by the use of liquid manure, night-soil, guano, Dutch 
ashes, or farmyard manure ; but the favourite fertilizers are 
Dutch ashes and liquid manure mixed with ground rape-cake; 
in default of these, the other kinds are substituted for them. 
Some dairy farmers prefer sending their cows out on the after- 
