Page:Willich, A. F. M. - The Domestic Encyclopædia (Vol. 2, 1802).djvu/119

Rh means of a course of well selected crops, to prevent the soil from resting, hardening, and running into weeds.

By this method, entire forms are continued in a constant rotation under 4, 6, or eight divisions, or fields, in such a manner as to improve the soil, and consequently to produce a larger income.

According to this new course, the wheat and barley exhaust the soil, while the clover and peas, or beans, ameliorate and improve it.

When we compare these two systems of rotations of crops, the latter is evidently the most profitable, as the 120 acres in clover are far superior to the 150 acres of common grasses on the hide-bound soil of the lay, or old field; and the grain and straw are more advantageous in the proportion of 300 to 185. Clover, peas, and beans (if sown in drills, and kept clean from weeds by hoeing), are inoffensive, and even ameliorating.—They all shade the ground during the hottest season of the year. Every kind of corn impoverishes the soil, and, if small, lets in weeds, which, together with rest, bind and foul the land.

The superiority of the new course of crops is still farther evinced, by a series of conclusive experiments made by Mr. A.. He divided 3 acres of old upland pasture into 36 squares, of 9 roads each, which he planted with beans, peas, wheat, barley, oats, cabbages, clover, potatoes, &c. in different rotations, with various success. From these comparative trials he drew the following practical inferences, which we recommend to the serious attention of our agricultural readers:

1. That potatoes exhaust the land more than any other fallow crop hitherto tried; and, in some courses, to a greater degree than barley, or even wheat.

2. That potatoes will not yield a tolerable crop, even on old lay newly broken up, without the aid of dung, and not a profitable one, even with it.

3. That barley, beans, and oats, succeed much better than wheat, after potatoes.

4. That beans are the most valuable fallow crop on new land of this quality.

5. That the preservation of the fertility of old turf depends much on the number of bean-crops introduced; as, the more frequently they are planted, the better the succeeding crops of white corn will be: and three successive years of beans are attended with an extraordinary produce of wheat.

6. That beans and barley, and beans and wheat, alternately, are both courses of great produce and advantage.

7. That the introduction of beans, in bad rotations, tends to remedy the evil of such courses.

8. That successive crops of white corn destroy that fertility, which different rotations will preserve in new ground; and that three such crops will render the land extremely foul and unprofitable.

9. That the two most productive courses are beans and barley,