Management of Clay Lands for Sheep- Feeding. 
527 
.better seeds after a good standing crop of oats upon my land than I 
ever did after barley and folding, and I can get my seeds up with 
greater regularity and certainty ; therefore I seed down the oat-crop 
for clover. 
The oat-crop again I divide into three parts, first, winter oats, 
of which I get in some in the autumn in order to make sure of some 
forward corn ; then black Tartarian oats, a hardy productive kind for 
the spring ; and lastly, some Canadian oats. I sow Tartarians after 
winter beans in March, put winter oats on the 'spring bean-land, and 
the Canadians on the pea-land, and change the ground every rotation. 
I dung for this crop and hoe for seeds.* When preparing for spring 
oats, after winter bcaus and peas, we clean, but do not break, the land 
in autumn, finding that it is advantageous to let the land lie for some 
time. 
We have now got through the four crops of corn, which follow one 
after the other, thus : — Wheat, barley, beans or peas, and oats. I come 
next to the first green crop or fifth year, wherein we have clean clover, 
trefoil, cow-grass, Dutch clover, Italian grass, improved Italian 
rye-grass, besides the tares required for mowing. Apportion those 
crops according to your requirements, drill all the seed when you 
hoe oats between the rows of corn, and top-dress early Italian rye- 
grass with 3 cwt. of guano, one-half to go on in autumn and one- 
half in spring. Eeserve land for tares sufficient to supply nag- 
horses, cart-horses, colts, and cows, and also to provide spring-feed for 
the ewes and lambs. Sutton's improved Italian rye-grass — the most 
reliable plant I have come across for many years — will come to the 
scythe or be ready for feeding when the tares are done. Sow what clean 
clover is expedient, and seed the rest down with a mixture adapted to 
yoiu - soil, so as to make a good sound bottom ; this will be the last 
to break up for roots.* This is the land on which, as I have said 
before, our sheep will stand during the wettest part of the winter, our 
old clover-leys remaining unbroken till quite the spring of the year, 
and giving a firm run for the sheep when no other part of the farm 
would bear them. The mixture I sow is composed of trefoil, cow- 
grass, Dutch clover, and Italian rye-grass; my mode of sowing is 
this : I horse-hoe with Garrett's implement, and drill the small seeds 
between the rows of corn at the same time that the hoe breaks the 
surface ; thus the weeds die and the seeds begin to live at the same 
time. 
I come now to the sixth course — roots following seeds. I reserve 
the land which was in tares for mangold ; the reason being that 
cutting these early tares for the use of horses, we at once cart on long 
manure, which is ploughed in immediately with three horses at a 
great depth, so that the land is often under a summer fallow in May. 
I follow the mangold with such roots as store well, and have a fair 
breadth of early white turnips. 
I come now to the second division of the seeded or clover land, 
that is, the land intended for swedes and hardy turnips. I plough as 
* For details and cost of cultivation, see diagram. 
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