On the Uses to which each Soil may be most ously applied.
Clay soils, when sufficiently enriched with manures, arc naturally well qualified for carrying crops of wheat, oats, beans, and clover ; but are not fitted for barley, turnips, potatoes, Ste. or even for being kept under grass longer than one year. Perhaps such soils ought to be regularly summe•-fallowed once in six, or at the most once in eight years, even when they are comparatively in a clean state, as they contract a sourness and adhesion from wet ploughing, only to be removed by exposure to the sun and wind during the dry months of summer. Soils of this kind receive little benefit from winter ploughing, unless so far as their surface is thereby pre sented to the frost, which mellows and reduces them in a manner infinitely superior to what could be accom plished by all the operations of man. Still they are not cleaned or made free of weeds hy et inter ploughing ; and therefore this operation can only be considered to a good mean for pi °curing a seed-bed, in which the. seeds of the future lop may be safely deposited. Hence the necessity of cleaning clay soils during the summer months, and of having always a large part of every clay fin ni under sunnner fallow. All clay soils require great industry and care, as well as a cuhsiocrable portion of know ledge in the dressing or management, to keep them in good condition ; yet when their natur.I toughness is got the better of, they always yield the heaviest and most abundant crops. One thing requisite for a clay soil, is to keep it rich and full of maim) e ; a poor clay being the most ungrateful of all soils, and hardly capable of repaying the expense of labour, after being worn out and exhausted. A clay soil also receives, comparative ly, small benefit from grass ; and when once allowed to get into a sterile condition, the most active endeavours es ill with difficulty restore fertility to it, after the lapse of many years.
Upon light soils, the case is very different. Thesc flourish under the grass husbandry ; and bare summer fallow is rarely required, because they may be cleaned and cropped in the same year, with that valuable escu lent, turnip. Upon light soils, however, wheat can sel dom be extensively cultivated ; nor can a crop be ob tained of equal value, either in respect of quantity or quality, as on clays and loans. The best method of pro
curing wheats on light lands, is to sow upon a clover stubble, when the soil has got an artificial solidity of body, and is thereby rendered capable of sustaining this grain till it arrives at maturity. The same observation applies to soils of a gravelly nature ; and upon both, bar ley is generally found to be of as great benefit as wheat. The facility with which every variety of light soil is cul tivated, furnishes great encouragement to keep them under the plough, though it rarely happens, that when more than one half of such soils are kept in aration, the possessors are greatly benefited.
Thin clays, and peat earths, are more fi iendly to the growth of oats than of other grains, though in favour able seasons a heavy crop of wheat may be obtained from a thin clay soil, when it has been completely sum mer-fallowed, and enriched with dung. A fiist applica tion of calcareous manure is generally accompanied with great advantage upon these soils ; but when once the effect of thi6 application is over, it can hardly be re peated a second time, unless the land has been rely cau tiously managed alter the first dressing. Neither of these soils is friendly to grass, yet there is a neces sity of exercising this husbandry with them, because they are incapable of standing the plough more than a year or two in the course of a rotation. When we conic to that branch of our article which treats of crop ping, we shall notice these matters at greater length but in this place it may be sufficient to say, that 11 heat ought to be the predominant crop upon all the rich clays and strong beams, and that light soils of every kind are well qualified for turnips, barley, sac. Upon the thin nd moorish soils, oats must necessarily preserve a prom inent rank ; and grass seeds may be cultivated upon every one of them, though with different degrees of ad vantage, according to the natural and artificial richness of each soil, or to the qualities which it possesses for en couraging the growth of clover, in the first instance, and preserving the roots of the plant afterwards.