On the Maintenance of Fertility in new Arabic Land. 289 
during August in that year ; during the past year large crops of 
Italian rye-grass have been cut off it. 
I need not further describe the fields which have been selected. 
I believe they are pretty fairly valued. The immense increase 
which they exhibit in the annual value of some parts of the farm 
is to be attributed doubtless in great measure to the thorough- 
drainage which it has received, to the buildings which have been 
erected on it, and to the roads which have been made through it ; 
but also, and chiefly, to the conversion of its pastures, which have 
given profitable opportunity for the application of capital and 
skill. And does not the circumstance that the facts given are 
those of a history extending through a period of at least seven 
years, prove that they may be considered as permanently charac- 
teristic of the land to which they refer ? — that is, so long as the 
present system of cultivation shall continue to be adopted. 
So far from the land giving any sign of exhaustion, I do not 
hesitate to say that, during the past few years, it has been increasing 
in richness. Its great fault now is its tendency to grow too much 
straw, which being converted into manure for re-application to the 
land, has been year by year adding to the mischief; till now, by 
permission of the Earl of Ducie, our landlord, we have endea- 
voured to meet the growing evil by altering our system in part — 
seeding our rye -grass occasionally, and taking a crop of beans in 
place of a green crop ; and it is hoped, by thus robbing the land 
of some of its fertilizing elements, to diminish that tendency to 
grow so much straw, by which our wheat crop has latterly been 
so much laid. 
But I must now describe the method of cultivation by which 
this permanence in the fertility of broken-up grass-land has been 
secured. The principal feature in the system, and of course I do 
not describe it as any thing new, is the alternation of grain crops 
for sale with green crops for consumption. 
After the drainage of the land, half of it was ploughed up 
before winter, and, half, pared and burnt early in spring : the 
former portion was sown, most of it, with oats ; the latter was pre- 
pared for turnips. The elements of fertility naturally present in 
the soil ensured the abundance of the first crops, and thus suf- 
ficed, free of expense, to start that system of alternate husbandry 
in full vigour, which more than any other that can be named has 
the merit of self-maintenance. Every other year, for a longer or 
shorter period since, every field on the farm has borne a crop of 
wheat, and on the alternate years the crops have been successively 
clover, turnips, carrots, clover, mangold-wurzel, potatoes. The 
root crops have been for the most part carried to the buildings, 
and there consumed with and on the straw, by cattle, sheep, and 
pigs. The dung thus manufactured is either carried out, as it is 
