522 
Abstract Report of Agricultural Discussions. 
tended only for such land as that described ; and those whose lot is 
cast on a kinder soil, not subject to these conditions, will probably find 
nothing in this scheme that will assist them in their business. My 
object has been to discover a course of cropping adapted to this soil, 
to relieve it to some extent of the heavy burdens and innumerable 
difficulties which beset its tillage, and to find the means of profitably 
consuming the greater part of the root-crops on the land. The diffi- 
culties attending the management of clay-land are too well known to 
all engaged in it to need minute description. We Lave all seen the 
long rugged tracks of the cart-wheels in our turnip-fields, and tho 
corresponding yellow scars in our barley crop, in the month of June, 
as the result of carting off our roots to the ungrateful bullock at home. 
We have also seen the thin barley and thinner seeds, where stood the 
puddled fold and unhappy sheep, afterwards the battle-field of Clod 
and Crosskill. Where spring corn is to follow the root-crop on 
land like this, and in a climate like ours, these things must happen ; 
but what worse preparation can there be for our most valuable, most 
sensitive, and most delicate plant, barley ? Then, again, on taking 
wheat after clover on such land, when there has been rain enough to 
admit of its hieing ploughed, tho land comes up so tough and stubborn 
that the wheat can only be put in by force, and buried or rather hidden, 
in its water-tight drain, by a vast amount of horse-labour and wear 
and tear ; whilst if the season be unfavourable, the wheat is not got 
into tho land till winter is come. Now, though wheat likes a firm 
bottom, the seed of wheat, like all other seeds, docs not like to be 
wedged up in a water-tight bed, smeared over with the harrow. 
Wheat likes an early start, and its produce is, ceteris paribus, very 
much in proportion to tho progress it makes in the first quarter 
of its growth. If our soil, therefore, is naturally tough and binding, 
we must adopt such a mode of preparation as will afford as kindly 
a seed-bed as possible. Our seed must fall into soil in a condition 
favourable to a rapid development of root and stem. Again, with re- 
gard to our most valuable heavy-land roots, mangold, if they are 
grown after wheat, even with the most active autumn tillage, the time 
of preparation is so short that we do not get either the weight or 
the quality of root which the same land is capable of producing when 
exposed to the influence of a midsummer sun. 
The system of cultivation which is set forth in the diagram (see pp. 
524 and 525), meets these drawbacks to our success, and by affording 
seasonable and ample time for the profitable consumption of a very 
large amount of, green crop on the land by sheep, enables the heavy- 
laud farmer to participate in the advantages of sheep-farming. It 
renders the farm self-fertilizing, the haulage of the root-crop home is 
avoided, and by growing for the most part roots that will store on the 
land, and taking no corn-crop in the spring, ample time is afforded 
to consume the root-crops with advantage to sheep and land. Tho 
rotation is so arranged as to defer the repetition of each crop for 
seven years instead of four ; and the subdivision of each course affords 
an opportunity of removing clover and such crops as are most sensitive 
on the point of repetition, to an interval of fourteen or twenty-one 
