twixt the
recurrences of clover.

When the four-course rotation is followed, no better plan of managing
this process has been yet suggested than to sow beans, pease, potatoes
or tares, instead of clover, for one round, making the rotation one of
eight years instead of four. The mechanical condition of the soil seems
to have something to do with the success or failure of the clover crop.
We have often noticed that headlands, or the converging line of
wheel-tracks near a gateway at which the preceding root crop had been
carted from a field, have had a good take of clover, when on the field
generally it had failed. In the same way a field that has been much
poached by sheep while consuming turnips upon it, and which has
afterwards been ploughed up in an unkindly state, will have the clover
prosper upon it, when it fails in other cases where the soil appears in
far better condition. If red clover can be again made a safe crop, it
will be a boon indeed to agriculture. Its seeds are usually sown along
with a grain crop, any time from the 1st of February to May, at the rate
of 12 lb to 20 lb per acre when not combined with other clovers or
grasses.

Italian rye-grass and red clover are now frequently sown in mixture for
soiling, and succeed admirably. It is, however, a wiser course to sow
them separately, as by substituting the Italian rye-grass for clover,
for a single rotation, the farmer not only gets a crop of forage as
valuable in all respects, but is enabled, if he choose, to prolong the
interval betwixt the sowings of clover to twelve years, by sowing, as
already recommended, pulse the first round, Italian rye-grass the
second, and clover the third.

These two crops, then, are those on which the arable-land farmer mainly
relies for green forage. To have them good, he must be prepared to make
a liberal application of manure. Good farm-yard dung may be applied with
advantage either in autumn or spring, taking care to cart it upon the
land only when it is dry enough to admit of this being done without
injury. It must also be spread very evenly so soon as emptied from the
carts. But it is usually more expedient to use either guano, nitrate of
soda, or soot for this purpose, at the rates respectively of 2 cwt., 1
cwt. and 20 bushels. If two or more of these substances are used, the
quantities of each will be altered in proportion. They are best also to
be applied in two or three portions at intervals of fourteen to twenty