I 
68 ROTATION OF CROPS. 
good heart unless summer fallowing was practised, in 
every round or succession of crops.— Mr. Oldacre. 
Mr. Darke observes, “ that in common fields pro¬ 
perty being much intermixed, there can be little expe¬ 
rimental husbandry, being by custom tied down to 
three crops and a fallow. Beginning with a fallow, the 
course is as named before. 
1. Fallow. 
2. Barley. 
3. Beans, which always produce abundantly, or 
clover, or vetches, eaten off as green crops by horses 
tied with stakes and ropes made with the rind of witch 
hazel, a custom peculiar to the Vale of Evesham ; 
and there are well informed gentlemen who highly 
commend this mode of husbandry. 
4. Wheat, sown on the bean stubble, or vetch, or 
clover sward; and this mode invariably succeeds bet¬ 
ter than sowing it on fallow ground, a doctrine in ge¬ 
neral disbelieved by those who are strangers to the 
Vale of Evesham, so remarkable for its high ridges and 
deep furrows. 
In the common fields of Eckington, and of Bredon, 
I observed large breadths of turnips,, and of potatoes ; 
these were good crops, well managed, and kept clean: 
if the potatoes were followed by wheat, and the turnips 
by barley it gives a course as follows:— 
1. Turnips. 
2. Barley. 
3. Clover. 
4. Potatoes. 
5. Wheat. 
Such a course well managed, upon land of sufficient 
staple to bear it, would furnish an abundant supply of 
food for man and beast; and perhaps no course of 
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