506 Oh the Advantages and Disadvantages of 
And this very heavy course was pursued, with the best results, 
upon a piece of poor exhausted grass land, the soil an alluvial 
loam of mild texture. Its fertility has been kept up by repeated 
but moderate supplies of manure, and thorough cultivation upon 
every returning season. Another field of 12 acres, in the writer's 
occupation, was broken up in the year 1831, and a still heavier 
course of crops taken, but without exhaustion ; and at the present 
time it is fully capable of sustaining a similar course, with the 
usual adjuncts of good management and good dung. 
A large breadth of land of medium quality, near the writer's 
residence, has within the past few years been broken up. The 
tenants, when under grass, stocked them thus : — In one case 5 
hoggets per acre, and a young steer to 5 acres, and in the winter 
1 shearling per acre ; in another case 2 ewes suckling lambs, and 
2 hoggets per acre, and a young steer to 3 acres ; in other cases 
the same or very similar courses were pursued, the land carrying 
about I sheep per acre in winter. These lands have been broken 
up and planted with potatoes the first year. The labour ex- 
pended in the setting and lifting these crops has been great, but 
the produce has abundantly repaid the outlay — the crops ave- 
raging from 350 to 600 bushels per acre of Regents and other not 
very prolific but very marketable varieties. These have been 
fallowed with wheat, which course, under ordinary care, may be 
thrice repeated. Inferior grass lands cannot do anything in com- 
parison ! The return upon grazing such land is trifling, but the 
profit under culture is amjile ; and they can with comparative 
ease be kept up to the mark, or in truly good heart, as already 
shown, and must in this state be worth more to rent as arable 
than as pasture lands. By adopting the usual course of seeding, 
they may be made to produce much more animal food for the con- 
sumption of the public than before. Lands of first-rate quality 
pay still better. The crops of brown mustard are frequently very 
valuable ; and though the price is fickle — having varied, within 
the writer's recollection, from 8*-. to 505. per bushel — yet it is 
good policy on these lands to take a crop or more previous to 
wheat, which usually succeeds it, and often repeated to an in- 
credible extent. The writer can point out several fields which 
have had 3, 4, and one as high as 6 crops of wheat in succession ;* 
he in one instance had 2 crops successively, averaging 46 bushels 
per acre, and many similar facts might be mentioned, and these 
have continued under cropping without in any great degree im- 
pairing the fertility of the soil : indeed, after taking tcoad, it is a 
common practice to keep on cropping for many years, only 
• One field has sustained forty-five years' cropping without a fallow or 
fallow-crop. 
