Fallowing, beyond all doubt, is needless where there is a due supply of manure, and a sufficient application of the spade, fork, and hoe to the soil. Fallowing can have no other beneficial influence than by destroying weeds, aiding the decomposition of offensive exuviae, exposing the soil to the disintegrating influence of the air, and accumulating in it decomposing matter. Now all these effects can be produced by judicious stirrings and manurings. Mr. Barnes, gardener to Lady Rolle, at Bicton, bears confirmatory testimony to this opinion, founded on many years' experience.

"To rest or fallow ground for any length of time is only loss of time and produce; more benefit will be obtained by trenching and forking in frosty or hot sunny weather, in a few days, than a whole season of what is erroneously called rest or fallow. Trench, fork, and hoe; change every succeeding crop; return to the earth all refuse that is not otherwise useful in a green state, adding a change of other manures occasionally, especially charred refuse of any kind, at the time of putting a crop into the ground. Every succeeding crop will be found healthy and luxuriant, suffering but little either from drought, too much moisture, or vermin." - Principles of Gardening.

The practice of fallowing appears to have been one of great antiquity. Virgil (who flourished his grey-goose quill two thousand years ago), thus alludes to it in his Georgics:

"Both these unhappy soils the swain forbears, And keeps a Sabbath of alternate years, That the spent earth may gather heart again, And bettered by cessation, bear the grain, At least where vetches, pulse, and tares, have stood, And stalks of lupines grew (a stubborn wood), Th' ensuing season, in return may bear The bearded product of the golden year".