| the paleze or chaff in the same manner as wheat. 
| so decidedly specific in its awn-shedding char- 
| acter as to be fully entitled to the specific name 
| varieties of it, of slightly different character, and 
| said Mr. Lawson in 1836, “Mr. Loudon intro- 
342 
tingham long-eared barley, Ospisdale barley, 
Potter’s barley, Providence barley, and Suffolk 
short-necked barley. Specimens of all these vari- 
eties have been deposited in the Museum of the 
Highland Society. 
Two-rowed black barley has so very marked a 
character as to be treated sometimes as a per- 
manent variety under the name of Hordeum dis- 
tichon nigrum, and sometimes as a quite distinct 
species under the name of Hordeum nigrum, yet 
the latter of these names belongs just as fully to 
the six-rowed black barley, and is therefore of 
doubtful application. Two-rowed black barley is 
prolific in both quantity of grain and bulk of 
straw, but does not ripen till six or eight days 
after the common English barley. Its grains are 
| large, coarse in shape, and black or dark-blue in 
colour.—The Cape of Good Hope barley is closely 
allied to the two-rowed black barley, but has its 
grains more closely arranged in the spike, and its 
barren florets of a whitish colour. 
Two-rowed naked barley is sometimes treated 
| asa permanent variety under the name of Hor- 
deum distichon nudum, but more frequently and 
more correctly as a distinct species under the 
name of Hordeum nudum. Its ear is long; and 
the grains of each usually amount to twenty- 
eight or thirty, are very large, and separate from 
One sort of it is believed by some botanists to be 
Hordeum nudum, while another sort is so far 
capable of losing that character as to be properly 
a variety of common two-rowed barley, under the 
name of Hordeum distichon imberbe. But sub- 
obtained from mutually independent sources, 
have at several periods been brought into culti- 
vation under different names, and all driven out 
of favour. Miller says, ‘‘ There was cultivated to 
a considerable extent in Staffordshire, about sixty 
or seventy years since, under the name of 7ritz- 
cum speltum, a sort of naked barley or wheat bar- 
ley, the ear shaped like barley but the grain like 
wheat; and it made good bread and good malt, 
and yielded a good increase.” But, upwards of 
half a century ago, this 7reticum speltum appears 
to have passed out of cultivation into total ob- 
livion. “About seven or eight years since,” 
duced two-rowed naked barley from the north of 
Europe, under the name of Siberian barley, and 
distributed it among several cultivators in various 
parts of Britain. One portion, consisting of 
about 50 grains, which he sent to Mr. Gorrie, 
Annat Gardens, Perthshire, and which was sown 
in the garden, yielded a considerable return of 
grain, and ripened early; but on its cultivation 
being extended to the field, its straw was found 
to become very brittle and tender towards the 
| period of ripening, so as to be unfit for support- 
ing the ears, and completely incapable of forming 
BARLEY. 
into ropes for binding. Its cultivation was there- 
fore abandoned. The grain, however, on being 
ground, yielded a good barley-flour; and had it 
not been for the above-mentioned circumstance, 
it might have been cultivated with advantage 
for that purpose.”—The only other species of 
cereal barley known to us are a rye-like species, 
Hordeum secalinum, mentioned in writings of 
nearly a century and a half old, and the flattened 
species, Hordeum complanatum, introduced to 
Great Britain from the south of Kurope about 25 
or 26 years ago. 
Cultivation of Barley.—In the rotation of crops, 
barley may follow either a summer fallow, pota- 
toes, turnips, pulse, or any forage or herbage 
crop. An universal practice, during the imma- 
ture or transition period of modern husbandry, 
was to sow wheat after a summer fallow, and 
barley after wheat; but this practice entailed the 
wasteful necessity of another fallow after the 
barley ; and it was first modified by sowing clover 
with the wheat, and either dispensing with the 
barley or assigning it a later place in a longer 
rotation; and was afterwards pretty generally 
abolished, by sowing barley with clover after the 
summer fallow, and sowing wheat after the clover. 
Yet in some peculiar circumstances, when the 
soil is a very friable loam, when the autumn is | 
unusually dry, when wheat stubble can be plough- 
ed and reduced to a fine clean tilth before the 
commencement of close winter weather, and when 
several ploughings and harrowings can be given 
in spring, barley may, even in the present highly 
improved state of husbandry, advantageously 
follow wheat; yet these circumstances are of 
comparatively rare concurrence, and ought in no 
case to be further calculated on than as affording 
an excellent and profitable opportunity of arrest- 
ing or preventing the deterioration of land which | 
always, in some degree, results from a long and 
unvarying routine of even the best rotation. In 
most cases, too, in which barley can judiciously 
be made to follow wheat, the land cannot be 
sufficiently freed from the seeds and roots of 
weeds to be fit for an accompanying sowing of 
clover and grass seeds; so that in such cases, the 
barley ought to be sown alone. 
When barley profitably follows a summer fal- 
low, the soil is strong, comparatively adhesive, | 
much fitter for wheat than for turnips, so firm 
and compact that if a crop of turnips upon it 
were fed off by sheep, or removed with carts, it 
would be most mischievously consolidated during 
winter by the tread of the sheep’s feet or the 
pressure of the carts’ wheels. Land of this kind, 
though highly fertile under suitable mechanical 
conditions, cannot without much labour and tact 
be brought into a sufficiently pulverulent and 
porous state for the luxuriant or even healthy 
growth of barley; and, therefore, in various dis- 
tricts, particularly in Essex and Suffolk, it is | 
subjected to a fallow of 18 months, from harvest 
till the second spring, in order that it may be | 
