ensure success, without judicious arrangement. With it, a farm furnishes an uninterrupted succession of useful labor during all the seasons of the year; and the most is made that circumstances will admit of, by regularly employing the laboring persons and cattle, at such works as are likely to be the most profitable. Under such a system, it is hardly to be credited how little time is lost, either of the men or horses, in the course of a whole year. This is a great object; for each horse may be estimated at three shillings per day, and each man at two shillings. Every day, therefore, in which a man and horse are unemployed, occasions the loss of at least five shillings to the husbandman.

4535. As the foundation of a proper arrangement, it is necessary to have a plan of the farm, or at least a list of the fields or parcels of land into which it is divided, describing their productive extent, the quality of the soil, the preceding crops, the cultivation given to each, and the species and quantity of manure they have severally received. The future treatment of each field, for a succession of years, may then be resolved on with more probability of success. With the assistance of such a statement, every autumn an arrangement of crops for the ensuing year ought to be made out; classing the fields or pieces of land, according to the purposes for which they are respectively intended. The number of acres allotted for arable land, meadow, or pasture, will thus be ascertained. It will not then be difficult to anticipate what number of horses and laborers will be required during the season for the fields in culture, nor the live stock that will be necessary for the pasture land. The works of summer and harvest will likewise be foreseen, and proper hands engaged in due time to perform them.

4536. A farmer should have constantly in view a judicious rotation of crops, according to the nature and quality of his soil, and should arrange the quantity and succession of labor accordingly. Team labor, when frost and bad weather do not intervene, should be arranged for some months; and hand labor, for some weeks, according to the season of the year. "A general memorandum list of business to be done," may therefore be useful, that nothing may escape the memory, and that the most requisite work may be brought forward first, if suitable to the state of the weather. In this way, the labor will go on regularly, and without confusion, while by a proper attention, either a distribution of labor, or an occasional consolidation of it, may be applied to every part of the farm.

4537. As general rules, connected with the arrangement, and the successful management of a farm, the following are particularly to be recommended. 4538. The farmer ought to rise early, and see that others do so. In the winter season, breakfast should be taken by candle light, for by this means an hour is gained, which many farmers indolently lose; though six hours in a week are nearly equal to the working part of a winter day. This is a material object, where a number of servants are employed. It is also particularly necessary for farmers to insist on the punctual performance of their orders.

4539. The whole farm should be regularly inspected, and not only every field examined, but every beast seen, at least once a day, either by the occupier, or by some intelligent

servant.

4540. In a considerable farm, it is of the utmost consequence to have servants specially appropriated for each of the most important departments of labor; for there is often a great loss of time, where persons are frequently changing their employments. Besides, where the division of labor is introduced, work is executed not only more expeditiously, but also much better, in consequence of the same hands being constantly employed in one particular department. For that purpose, the ploughmen ought never to be employed in manual labor, but regularly kept at work with their horses, when the weather will admit of it.

4541. To arrange the operation of ploughing, according to the soils cultivated, is an object of essential importance. On many farms there are fields, which are soon rendered unfit to be ploughed, either by much rain, or by severe drought. In such cases, the prudent farmer, before the wet season commences, should plough such land as is in the greatest danger of being injured by too much wet; and before the dry period of the year sets in, he should till such land as is in the greatest danger of being rendered unfit for ploughing by too much drought. The season between seed time and winter may be well occupied in ploughing soils intended to be sown with beans, oats, barley, and other spring crops, by means of the grubber (2533.). On farms where these rules are attended to, there is always some land in a proper condition to be ploughed; and there is never any necessity, either for delaying the work, or performing it improperly.

1

4542. Every means should be thought of to diminish labor, or to increase its power. For instance, by proper arrangement, five horses may do as much labor as six perform, according to the usual mode of employing them. One horse may be employed in carting turnips during winter, or in other necessary farm work at other seasons, without the necessity of reducing the number of ploughs. When driving dung from the farm-yard,

three carts may be used, one always filling in the yard, another going to the field, and a third returning; the leading horse of the empty cart ought then to be unyoked, and put to the full one. In the same manner, while one pair of horses are preparing the land for sowing turnips, the other three horses may be employed in carrying the dung to the land, either with two or three carts, as the situation of the ground may happen to require. By extending the same management to other farm operations, a considerable saving of labor may be effected.

4543. Previously to engaging in a work, whether of ordinary practice, or of intended improvement, the best consideration of which the farmer is capable ought to be given to it, till he is satisfied that it is advisable for him to attempt it. When begun, he ought to proceed in it with much attention and perseverance, until he has given it a fair trial. It is a main object, in carrying on improvements, not to attempt too much at once; and never to begin a work without a probability of being able to finish it in due

season.

4544. By the adoption of these rules, every farmer will be master of his time, so that every thing required to be done, will be performed at the proper moment; and not delayed till the season and opportunity have been lost. The impediments arising from bad weather, sick servants, or the occasional and necessary absence of the master, will, in that case, be of little consequence, nor embarrass the operations to be carried on; and the occupier will not be prevented from attending to even the smallest concerns connected with his business, on the aggregate of which his prosperity depends.

SECT. IV. Of domestic Management and personal Expenses.

4545. On domestic affairs, a hint may suffice. Young farmers beginning housekeeping, like most others in similar circumstances, are apt to sink too great a proportion of their capital in furniture, and furnishing riding-horses, carriages, &c.; and sometimes to live up to, or even beyond, their income. We do not mean that farmers should not live as well as other men of the same property; but merely that all beginners should live within their income. Even in the marketing expenses care is requisite; and the prudent farmer will do well, every penny or sixpence he lays out, to reckon up in his mind what that sum per day would amount to in a year. The amount will often astonish him, and lead to economy, and where practicable, retrenchment. Saving, as Franklin has inculcated, is the only certain way of accumulating money.

4546. In regard to housekeeping, it is observed in The Code of Agriculture, that the safest plan is, not to suffer it to exceed a certain sum for bought articles weekly. An annual sum should be allotted for clothing, and the personal expenses of the farmer, his wife, and children, which ought not to be exceeded. The whole allotted expense should be considerably within the probable receipts; and if possible one-eighth of the income annually received, should be laid up for contingencies, or expended in extra improvements on the farm.

BOOK VI.

OF THE CULTURE OF FARM LANDS.

4547. The business of farming consists of the culture of vegetables, and the treatment or culture of animals; in practice these are generally carried on together, but may be more conveniently treated of apart. In this Book, therefore, we confine ourselves to the culture of vegetables, and shall consider in succession the general processes of culture; the culture of corn and pulse; of roots and leaves; of herbage plants; of grasses; and of manufactorial plants.

CHAP. I.

Of the general Processes common to Farm Lands.

4548. Among general processes, those which merit particular notice in this place, are the rotation of crops, the working of fallows, and the management of manures. The theory of these processes has been already given in treating of soils and manures (PART II. Book III.); and it therefore only remains to detail their application to practice under different circumstances.

SECT. I. Of the Rotations of Crops suitable to different Descriptions of Soils. 4549. The proper distribution of crops, and a plan for their succession, is one of the, first subjects to which a farmer newly entered on a farm requires to direct his attention. The kind of crops to be raised are determined in a great measure by the climate, soil, and demand; and the quantity of each, by the value, demand, and the adjustment of farm labor.

4550. In the adjustment of farm labor, the great art is to divide it as equally as possible throughout the year. Thus it would not answer in any situation to sow exclusively autumn crops, as wheat or rye; nor only spring corns, as oats or barley; for by so doing all the labor of seed-time would come on at once, and the same of harvest work, while the rest of the year there would be little to do on the farm. But by sowing a portion of each of these and other crops, the labor both of seed-time and harvest is divided and rendered easier, and more likely to be done well and in season. But this point is so obvious as not to require elucidation.

4551. The succession or rotation of crops, is a point on which the profits of the farmer depend more than on any other. It is remarked by Arthur Young, that the agricultural writers, previously to the middle of the eighteenth century, paid little or no attention to it. They recite, he says, courses good, bad, and execrable, in the same tone; as matters not open to praise or censure, and unconnected with any principles that could throw light on the arrangement of fields. The first writer who assigned due importance to the subject of rotations seems to have been the Rev. Adam Dickson, in his Treatise on Agriculture, published in Edinburgh, in 1777; and soon afterwards Lord Kaimes, in his Gentleman Farmer, illustrates the importance of the subject; both writers were probably led to it by observing the effects of the Norfolk husbandry, then beginning to be introduced to Berwickshire. But whatever may have been the little attention paid to this subject by former writers, the importance of the subject of rotations, and the rule founded on the principles already laid down, that culmiferous crops ripening their seeds should not be repeated without the intervention of pulse roots, herbage, or fallow, is now "recognised in the practice and writings of all judicious cultivators, more generally perhaps than any other." (Edit. of Farmer's Mag.)

4552. The system of rotations is adopted for every soil, though no particular rotation can be given for any one soil which will answer in all cases, as something depends on climate, and something also on the kind of produce for which there is the greatest market demand. But wherever the system of rotations is followed, and the several processes of labor which belong to it properly executed, land will rarely get into a foul and exhausted state; or, at least if foul and exhausted under a judicious rotation, "matters would be much worse were any other system followed."

4553. The particular crops which enter into a system of rotation must obviously be such as are suited to the soil and climate, though as the valuable author so often quoted observes, "they will be somewhat varied by local circumstances; such as the proximity of towns and villages, where there is a greater demand for turnips, potatoes, hay, &c. than in thinly-peopled districts. In general, beans and clover, with rye-grass, are inter. posed between corn crops on clayey soils; and turnips, potatoes, and clover and rye-grass, on dry loams and sands, or what are technically known by the name of turnip soils. A variety of other plants, such as pease, tares, cabbages, and carrots, occupy a part, though commonly but a small part, of that division of a farm which is allotted to green crops. This order of succession is called the system of alternate husbandry; and on rich soils, or such as have access to abundance of putrescent manure, it is certainly the most productive of all others, both in food for man and for the inferior animals. One half of a farm is, in this course, always under some of the different species of cereal gramina, and the other half under pulse, roots, cultivated herbage, or plain fallow.

4554. But the greater part of the arable land of Britain cannot be maintained in a fertile state under this management; and sandy soils, even though highly manured, soon become too incohesive under a course of constant tillage. It, therefore, becomes necessary to leave that division or break that carries cultivated herbage, to be pastured for two years or more, according to the degree of its consistency and fertility; and all the fields of a farm are treated thus in their turn, if they require it. This is called the system of convertible husbandry, a regular change being constantly going on from aration to pasturage, and vice versá.

4555. Not to repeat the same kind of crop at too short intervals is another rule with regard to the succession of crops. Whatever may be the cause, whether it is to be sought for in the nature of the soil, or of the plants themselves, experience clearly proves, the advantages of introducing a diversity of species into every course of cropping. When land is pastured several years before it is brought again under the plough, there may be less need for adhering steadily to this rule; but the degeneracy of wheat and other corn crops recurring upon the same land every second year for a long period, has been very gene

rally acknowledged. It is the same with what are called green crops; beans and pease, potatoes, turnips, and, in an especial manner, red clover, become all of them much less productive, and much more liable to disease, when they come into the course, upon the same land, every second, third, or fourth year. But what the interval ought to be has not yet been determined, and probably cannot (from the great number of years that experiments must be continued to give any certain result) be determined, until the component parts of soils, and particularly the sort of vegetable nourishment which each species of plant extracts from the soil, have been more fully investigated.

4556. A change of the variety, as well as of the species, and even of the plants of the same variety, is found to be attended with advantage; and in the latter case, or a change of seed, the species and variety being the same, the practice is almost universal. It is well known, that of two parcels of wheat, for instance, as much alike in quality as possible, the one, which had grown on a soil differing much from that on which it is to be sown, will yield a better produce than the other that grew in the same, or a similar soil and climate. The farmers of Scotland, accordingly, find that wheat from the south, even though it be not, as it usually is, better than their own, is a very advantageous change; and oats and other grain, brought from a clayey to a sandy soil, other things being equal, are more productive than such as have grown on sandy soil. (Supp. Encyc. Brit. art. Agr. 144.)

4557. The following are examples of rotations suited to different soils, as given in Brown's excellent Treatise on Rural Affairs. The basis of every rotation, he says, "we hold to be either a bare summer fallow, or a fallow on which drilled turnips are cultivated, and its conclusion to be with the crops taken in the year preceding a return of fallow or drilled turnips, when of course a new rotation commences.

4558. Rotation for strong deep lands. According to this rotation, wheat and drilled beans are the crops to be cultivated, though clover and rye-grass may be taken for one year in place of beans, should such a variety be viewed as more eligible. The rotation begins with summer fallow, because it is only on strong deep lands that it can be profitably practised; and it may go on for any length of time, or so long as the land can be kept clean, though it ought to stop the moment that the land gets into a contrary condition. A considerable quantity of manure is required to go on successfully; perhaps dung should be given to each bean crop; and if this crop is drilled, and attentively horse-hoed, the rotation may turn out to be one of the most profitable that can be exercised.

4559. Rotation for loams and clays. Where it may not be advisable to carry the first rotation into execution, a different one can be practised; according to which labor will be more divided, and the usual grains more generally cultivated; as, for instance,

1. Fallow, with dung. 2. Wheat.

4. Barley.

5. Clover and rye-grass.
6. Oats or wheat.

7. Beans drilled and horse-hoed. 8. Wheat.

3. Beans, drilled and horse-hoed. This rotation is excellently calculated to insure an abundant return through the whole of it, provided dung is administered upon the clover stubble. Without this supply, the rotation would be cripplied, and inferior crops of course produced in the concluding years.

4560. Rotation for clays and loams of an inferior description. This rotation is calculated for soils of an inferior description to those already treated of.

1. Fallow, with dung.
2. Wheat.

3. Clover and rye-grass.
4. Oats.

5. Beans, drilled and horse-hoed. 6. Wheat.

According to this rotation, the rules of good husbandry are studiously practised, while the sequence is obviously calculated to keep the land in good order, and in such a condition as to ensure crops of the greatest value. If manure is bestowed, either upon the cloverstubble, or before the beans are sown, the rotation is one of the best that can be devised for the soils mentioned.

4561. Rotation for thin clays. On thin clays, gentle husbandry is indispensably necessary, otherwise the soil may be exhausted, and the produce unequal to the expense of cultivation. Soils of this description will not improve much while under grass; but, unless an additional stock of manure can be procured, there is a necessity of refreshing them in that way, even though the produce should, in the mean time, be comparatively of small value. The following rotation is not an improper one.

1. Fallow, with dung.
2. Wheat.

3. Grass pastured, but not too
early eaten.
4. Grass.

5. Grass.
6. Oats,

This rotation may be shortened or lengthened, according to circumstances, but should never extend further in point of ploughing, than when dung can be given to the fallowbreak. This is the keystone of the whole; and if it is neglected, the rotation is rendered useless.

4562. Rotation for peat earth soils. These are not friendly to wheat, unless aided by a quantity of calcareous matter. Taking them in a general point of view, it is not advisable to cultivate wheat, but a crop of oats may almost be depended upon, provided the previous management has been judiciously executed. If the subsoil of peat earth lands be retentive of moisture, the process ought to commence with a bare summer fallow; but if such are incumbent on free and open bottoms, a crop of turnips may be substituted for fallow; according to which method, the surface will get a body which naturally it did not possess. Grass, on such soils, must always occupy a great space of every rotation, because physical circumstances render regular cropping utterly impracticable. circumstances permit the land to be broken up, when oats are to be repeated.

1. Fallow, or turnips with dung. 2. Oats of an early variety.

3. Clover, and a considerable
quantity of perennial rye-grass.
4. Pasture for several years, till

4563. Rotation for light soils. These are easily managed, though to procure a full return of the profit which they are capable of yielding, requires generally as much attention as is necessary in the management of those of a stronger description. Upon light soils, a bare summer fallow is seldom called for, as cleanliness may be preserved by growing turnips, and other leguminous articles. Grass also is of eminent advantage upon such soils, often yielding a greater profit than what is afforded by culmiferous

crops.

1. Turnips.

2. Spring wheat, or barley.

3. Clover and rye-grass.
4. Oats or wheat.

This is a fashionable rotation; but it may be doubted whether a continuance of it for any considerable period is advisable, because both turnips and clover are found to fall off when repeated so often as once in four years. Perhaps the rotation would be greatly improved were it extended to eight years, whilst the ground, by such an extension, would be kept fresh and constantly in good condition. As for instance, were seeds for pasture sown in the second year, the ground kept three years under grass, broke up for oats in the sixth year, drilled with beans and pease in the seventh, and sown with wheat in the eighth; the rotation would then be complete, because it included every branch of husbandry, and admitted a variety in management generally agreeable to the soil, and always favorable to the interest of cultivators. The rotation may also consist of six crops, were the land kept only one year in grass, though few situations admit of so much cropping, unless additional manure is within reach.

4564. Rotation for sandy soils. These, when properly manured, are well adapted to turnips, though it rarely happens that wheat can be cultivated on them with advantage, unless they are dressed with alluvial compost, marl, clay, or some such substances as will give a body or strength to them, which they do not naturally possess. Barley, oats, and rye, the latter especially, are, however, sure crops on sands, and in favorable seasons will return greater profit than can be obtained from wheat.

By keeping the land three years in grass, the rotation would be extended to six years, a measure highly advisable.

4565. These examples are sufficient to illustrate the subject of improved rotations; but as the best general schemes may be sometimes momentarily deviated from with advantage, the same able author adds, that "cross cropping, in some cases, may perhaps be justifiable in practice; as, for instance, we have seen wheat taken after oats with great success, when these oats had followed a clover crop on rich soil; but, after all, as a general measure, that mode of cropping cannot be recommended. We have heard of another rotation, which comes almost under the like predicament, though, as the test of -experience has not yet been applied, a decisive opinion cannot be pronounced upon its merits. This rotation begins with a bare fallow, and is carried on with wheat, grass for one or more years, oats, and wheat, where it ends. Its supporters maintain that beans are an uncertain crop, and cultivated at great expense; and that in no other way will corn, in equal quantity and of equal value, be cultivated at so little expense, as according to the plan mentioned. That the expense of cultivation is much lessened, we acknowledge, because no more than seven ploughings are given through the whole rotation; but whether the crops will be of equal value, and whether the ground will be preserved in equally good condition, are points which remain to be ascertained by experience." (Brown on Rural Affairs.)

4566. As a general guide to devising rotations on clay soils, it may be observed, that winter or autumn sown crops are to be preferred to such as are put in in spring. Spring ploughing on such soils is a hazardous business, and not to be practised where it can possibly be avoided. Except in the case of drilled beans, there is not the slightest necessity for ploughing clays in the spring months; but as land intended to carry beans ought to be early ploughed, so that the benefit of frost may be obtained, and as the seed . furrow is an ebb one, rarely exceeding four inches in deepness, the hazard of spring