346 
On the St. John s-Day Rye. 
testify that, grown beside common or winter rye, it was fully a 
fortnight longer in coming into ear, and ten days later in ripening. 
A considerable aid towards the obtaining the full value of the 
crop, whether for sheep-feed or for green stable-meat, will be 
found in abstaining, if possible, from cropping it until the spring; 
and this for two reasons. In the first place, it is well known to 
physiologists that the foliage of every plant has important func- 
tions to perform in increasing and strengthening the roots ; and 
that if you rob the plant of its foliage, you detract from its power 
of bringing its produce to perfection. Some of the neighbours of 
the Rev. Professor Henslow asked him whether he approved of 
their practice of mowing their carrot-tops ? to which he answered 
by another question. What was their object in so doing ? Whether 
it was to reduce the size of the roots ? for if such was their aim, 
they would thereby fully attain it. The same consequence 
attends cropping the rye. Air. Baker observes (Journal, vol. vi. 
p. 181) that " rye must by rio means be fed off with sheep, as it 
never comes well to the scythe afterwards." This proposition, of 
course, does not apply to such rye-crops as are sown for the ex- 
clusive purpose of sheep-pasture ; but in that case the grower 
purposely consumes the crop in an early stage of growth, being 
content with the profit which he has then already achieved, in 
like manner as it may be good husbandry to kill a fat lamb. The 
copious covering which the foliage of a crop of St. John's-day 
rye gives to the soil during the parching winds of March and 
April, if shortly after eaten off by sheep, will leave the soil in a 
most rich and mellow tilth to receive a crop of swedes, carrots, 
mangold-wurzel, or turnips ; but a further crop of rye from the 
same roots will render but an inferior return. The lamented 
George Sinclair (Hort. Woburn. Gram. p. 249) states, that he 
found that old plants of grass, when cut very close after the first 
shoots of spring had made their appearance, afforded about one- 
third less weight of produce, in the whole season, than those 
plants of the same species which were left uncut till the flowering 
culms began to appear; and he also found, on repeated trials, 
that cropping seedling grasses before they had produced flowers, 
had the effect of retarding and weakening the after-growth of the 
plants for that season very much. I believe there is no farmer 
who has been compelled by want to depasture a piece of seeds in 
early spring, who has not feelingly learned how insignificant the 
entire produce of that piece, in the whole year, has been rendered 
bv that unthrifty operation. The case is the same with rye fed 
off; and it is to be noted that the autumnal feeding off the foliage 
is usually an uneconomical disposition of the crop. For the most 
part, feed in the autumn, before frost has commenced its de])re- 
dalions, or the sun wholly withdrawn its influence and vegetation 
