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pastured off the same autumn. One light ploughing is given, 
and 24 lbs. of seed per acre sown. It is grown by Colonel 
Croft, near York. 
4. The cultivation of Rye, as spring food for sheep, deserves 
particular mention. It is pursued extensively upon the chalk 
in Berkshire, and about Saffron Waldon, for the purpose of 
manuring the land for a turnip crop. Mr. Milburn, a most 
intelligent and active member of this Society, has lately, in a 
paper published in the Journal of the Royal Agricultural 
Society, introduced this subject to the notice of farmers,* the 
advantages of the cultivation of which are enumerated by 
him to be seven : — 
1. Provision of excellent green food at a season when of 
all others it is most wanted. 
2. It is produced without sacrificing any portion of the 
usual rotations pursued on the farm, and with little labour. 
3. It will grow on any soil, but especially on poor loose sand, 
where every other green esculent is more or less uncertain. 
4. It will bear any degree of frost and cold. 
5. It is as inexpensive as any grass or leguminous crop, 
or perhaps less expensive, — the cost of production being 
1 2s. l-|d. per acre. 
6. It is readily consumed by stock. 
7. It improves rather than deteriorates the soil. 
5. The practice of sowing turnips on stubble deserves notice, 
not only because it is pursued in several counties of England 
on the chalk, and particularly in Hampshire, but because it is 
the general practice in Flanders; and in their admirable 
economy of land, by this mode of cultivating the turnip, the 
* Seed two and a half bushels per acre, and one peck of rape seed. Earlier 
sown after harvest the better — seed not to be rolled. Begin to feed off the last 
week in March. Mr. Homcastle, of near Worksop, is stated by Mr. Reynolds, of 
Womersley, to have eaten off rye three times over, and that the last time was in 
May. 
