384 
Ireland and the somewhat moist districts of the 
champaign parts of Great Britain, are much more 
favourable to the cultivation of the bean than 
either the mountain valleys or the comparatively 
arid plains. A very moist climate prevents the 
setting of the blossoms; and a very dry one 
occasions a destructive abundance of the bean 
fly. A climate of medium humidity is the most 
suitable; and a dry summer in such a climate, 
favours the production of the seed, and a wet one 
the luxuriance of the straw. 
Rich clays and strong moist loams were for- 
merly regarded as the only soils in which beans 
could be advantageously grown; but free loams 
and the richer kinds of light turnip soils have, for a 
considerable time past, been found almost equally 
suitable. A rich strong loam, such as is most 
favourable for wheat, is the best for the bean ; 
and, if properly prepared, will produce a crop of 
fifty or even one hundred per cent. superior to 
the average crop of any soil of medium quality. 
A cold wet soil, or particularly a stiff retentive 
clay, appears, during the early growth, to be per- 
| fectly suitable; but it is far more favourable for 
the straw than for the seed, and, unless exceed- 
ingly well managed, yields but a poor return at 
harvest. The bean is an excellent substitute for 
a clean fallow upon inferior, wet, heavy land, 
exactly as the turnip is the cleaning, strength- 
ening, consolidating, commencing, member of a 
rotation upon inferior, dry, light land; and the 
harvest appearance of these two crops, respec- 
tively upon the heavy and the light soils, affords 
one of the best possible criteria of the farmer’s 
industry and skill, and a quite decisive indica- 
tion of the artificial changes which have been 
| effected on the mechanical and chemical condi- 
tion of the land. The strong, penetrating, and 
ramified root of the bean, cleaves and subdivides 
the stiff soil, so as to draw down a free circulation 
| of atmospheric air, and to dry, pulverize, and 
mellow the clayey earth; and its succulent leaves 
absorb a large amount of nourishment from the 
atmospheric gases, and, by their fall and decay, 
communicate the elements of most of that nour- 
ishment to the soil. A crop of beans, while 
eliminating nearly as much nutritious matter 
for the use of animals as a crop of wheat, pro- 
duces a far less exhausting effect upon the soil ; 
and, in general, but especially upon heavy land, 
it excels every other crop in making a remuner- 
ating return for manure, and in effecting a suit- 
able preparation for oats or wheat. 
The bean, from its habit of growth, and the 
manner in which it may be cultivated, is usually 
regarded as a cleaning crop, and made prepara- 
tory to corn; yet, owing to the different adapta- 
tions of its several varieties, and to the different 
methods of cultivation of which it admits, it may 
be very variously treated in systems of rotation. 
It may be sown on land broken up from grass, 
and will perfectly well succeed in such a case ; 
yet it is not so suitable here as oats, and ought 
surface. 
BEAN. 
in general to follow a corn crop, and to be treated 
as a substitute for a clean fallow. When regarded 
as an auxiliary to the profitable management of 
heavy soils, it prolongs the remunerating series 
of a rotation, or enables the farmer advantage- 
ously to postpone the recurrence of summer fal- 
low. Ifa good bean soil be in a proper state of 
freedom from weeds, and have not been exhausted 
by overcropping, it may receive the bean either 
preparatory to corn or subsequently to corn, or, 
in favourable circumstances, may grow the two 
in alternation for a series of years; but when 
either weedy or exhausted, it ought, if a heavy 
soil, to be laid up to naked fallow, and, if a 
lightish soil, to be cropped with turnip. In the 
richest districts of Kent, beans and wheat—by 
cultivating the former in drills, giving plentiful 
doses of manure, and making a diligent use of 
the hoe—may, without any change or fallow, be 
grown many years in succession. Throughout 
the Isle of Thanet, the common rotation is bar- 
ley, beans, and wheat; and in the district around 
Maidstone, the bean crop most commonly follows 
clover, but sometimes it follows wheat, or barley, 
or oats, and in a few instances it follows turnips. 
One rotation of six crops tried by Arthur Young, 
together with the produce of each of the crops 
per acre, was beans 24 bushels, beans 32 bushels, 
beans 40 bushels, cabbages 83 tons, beans 32 
bushels, and wheat 33 bushels ; another was 
beans 24 bushels, barley 39 bushels, beans 32 
bushels, barley 44 bushels, beans 33 bushels, and 
wheat 25 bushels; and another was beans 24 
bushels, wheat 225 bushels, beans 265 bushels, 
wheat 27+ bushels, beans 24 bushels, and wheat 
24 bushels. The chief use of these examples, 
however, is to show how much may be made of 
beans, or with what freedom and frequency they 
may recur,—certainly not to inculcate that, in 
any ordinary circumstances, they ought to be 
treated with such remarkable prominence. Pro- 
bably the most profitable stated recurrence cf the 
bean, on a moderately light loam, is in a rotation 
of turnips, barley, clover, beans, and wheat ; or, 
on very richly conditioned loam, turnips, barley, 
clover, oats, beans, wheat, and beans. 
Stubble land intended for beans should be 
ploughed as early in autumn as attention to the 
other duties of the farm will admit, and, in all 
cases, with as deep a furrow as the strength of 
the horses can accomplish. The bean is a per- 
pendicular-rooted plant, extracting its peculiar 
nourishment from a considerable depth below the 
The soil, therefore, should be deeply 
ploughed, not only that it may be duly mellowed 
by the frosts of winter, but that the root of the 
bean may be enabled freely to penetrate and 
ramify itself in search of its necessary aliment. 
Some farmers, with the view of giving only one 
spring ploughing, and that endlong, give the 
autumn ploughing across the lands or ridges ; 
and others, intending to give two spring plough- 
ings, give the autumn ploughing endlong. ‘The 
