England. It is strange such contrariety of opinion and practice should exist in different parts of the kingdom. Wheat after turnips is esteemed in the north most likely for a good crop. Spring wheat has not yet had a fair trial; I much doubt whether it will be found as profitable as barley or oats.

Since the above was written, I have ascertained the produce of two Winchesters, sent me by Mr. Gibbs, of Piccadilly, and sown upon one acre three roods and seven perches; it produced 54 Winchesters and a half; some shot above 30 Winchesters per acre, weighing 58 lb., was sown the 16th of April, and reaped the first week in September. I had myself 50 acres this last season, and tolerably good; as it had been sown rather too thick, I had more straw than was desirable. The following account is taken from Sir John Sinclair's Report of Spring Wheat :

Mr. John Wright, of Pickworth, near Stamford, who has made many experiments for the Board of Agriculture, has made the following calculations of the relative value, from a trial of a rood of each sort :

Spring-sown grain is less subject to risk from the wire-worm, which in many places occasions great: losses. In many districts of France where spring wheat was getting out of fashion, they have been obliged again to have recourse to it, as an essential source of supply.

By

By this system of tillage, in a farm of six hundred acres, a saving is made of three hundred and forty acres, above one-half of the whole; which, supposing it were cropped with wheat, would supply bread for the consumption of above a thousand persons. There were likewise cultivated upon the same farm, four acres of carrots, which, in feeding horses, equalled thirty acres of oats. I had last year eight acres; I have this present one (1807) twenty-two acres, which enables me to transfer the produce of sixty acres of potatoes, provided for the support of horses, to the maintenance of man! What a resource is this in years of scarcity!

Besides the stimulus of individual emolument which has hitherto been derived from this system, I have been strongly impelled to an extension of it, from the decided opinion I have long entertained, that nothing could contribute so essentially to the welfare and security of the empire, as being enabled to raise a sufficient quantity of grain for our support, and thereby to emancipate us from our dependence on foreign aid.

I lament, in common with many others, that the recent pressure, so severely felt by the nation, did not lead to an immediate inclosure of all the wastes in the kingdom.

Independent, however, of eight millions of acres of waste land, which are supposed still to remain, and from which little profit is derived, I conceive it to be not only feasible, but perfectly practicable, by a change of system, and adopting a plan of feeding horses and cattle in houses and sheds (both summer

and

and winter) to make such a saving of land as would accomplish this desirable object. Each acre so employed, as I have endeavoured to show, might be made to produce seven times the quantity of food raised from an acre of hay or pasture. The advantages derived from green crops, upon the present narrow scale, must be considerable. In what state would the agriculture of Norfolk and Suffolk be without them? Supposing the green crops in Great Britain to amount annually to a hundred and thirty or forty thousand acres, this would add a sixteenth part to the whole provision of the cattle and sheep. Subsequent experience has induced me to suppose I have underrated the green crops.

Supposing there should be in England and Wales fourteen millions of acres under cultivation, and that in well-cultivated districts, there may be annually from a tenth to a fifteenth under green crop in Norfolk from a fourth to a seventh: were this system general throughout the kingdom, there would be nine hundred and thirty thousand acres and upwards in green crops, on the estimate of a fifteenth. The calcula tions of green crop throughout the kingdom have been one acre in a hundred, or one hundred and forty thousand. From the rapid improvements of late years, I should be inclined to believe there may be a seventieth of the land under tillage in green crops, or two hundred thousand acres. Allowing twenty tons per acre as an average medium of green crop, the produce would be four million tons of green food,

estimating

estimating the food consumed by a beast of seventy stone, to be twenty stone of turnips, with some straw per diem; and that in twenty weeks, or a hundred and forty days, it should gain fifteen stone in weight. Thus, with a consumption of seventeen ton and a half of turnips, say eighteen, the produce of victual from green food would be forty-six million and a half of pounds, which would allow half a pound a-day to eight millions of people for eleven days and a half; and taking the weight of the whole carcass (being increased from sixty stone to seventy-five), it would furnish the same allowance for fifty-seven days; but were the system of one-fiftieth of green crop general throughout the kingdom, it would supply half a pound each for eight million of people for two hundred and sixty-seven days; and allowing a part to be sheep, the produce of victual would be a great deal more on the same quantity of food.

Nor are we to confine our views of the defective state of the existing system of agriculture solely to the want of winter food. The extension of green crops would introduce, in an equal proportion, the growth of clover, by which the produce of summer food would be quadrupled. Though one experiment will not justify the assuming the decided advantage of soiling for far beyond grazing, yet do I conceive it affords a very strong presumption.

Assuming the calculation to be sufficiently accurate for my purpose, which supposes England and Wales to contain about forty-eight millions of acres, and that

twenty

twenty-one of these are under pasture for horses and cattle; I conceive a million and a half of acres might be taken from the lands in pasture, and brought under rotative crops, in aid of what is so applied at present.

I cannot entertain an apprehension that, from the capital possessed by Great Britain, any serious inconvenience could result to our general commerce, by the appropriation of such a sum as might be necessary to bring the newly-inclosed lands into a state of cultivation; though I have heard such arguments gravely urged as an objection to a general inclosure. In the county of Cumberland there are sixty thousand acres under inclosure; supposing the expense of fencing and bringing into tillage not to exceed 10l. per acre, or 600,000l., it might be natural to suppose the capital requisite to accomplish this, and the quantity of land acquired, would tend to depreciate the value of land. The fact is directly the reverse; land never sold at such prices.

Mr. Malthus has observed, that "in any instance where a certain quantity of dressing and labour employed to bring new land into cultivation, would have yielded a permanently greater produce if employed upon old land, both the individual and the nation are losers by cultivating new land." Had this argument been well founded, the one thousand three hundred inclosures of wastes, which have taken place within the pres ent reign, must have contributed to a decrease of victual. Has not an increasing population (with an improved mechanism) afforded hands to