To fix the flying sands of Belgium, the main and permanent expedient has been the application of manures; the preparation and care of this important ingredient has been, in Flanders, reduced to an actual trade, and barges innumerable are in constant transit on the canals, conveying it from its depôts and manufactories in the villages and towns to the rural districts, where it is to be applied. Servants, as a perquisite, are allowed a price for all the materials serviceable for preparing it, which they can collect in the house and farm-yards, and the value of which often amounts to as much as their nominal wages. Pits and a tank, called a _smoor-hoop_, or smothering heap, are attached to every farm, and tended with a systematic care that bespeaks the importance of their contents. Into these, every fermentable fluid is discharged, and mixed with the refuse of vegetables; the rape-cake, which remains after expressing the oil, wood-ashes, soaper’s waste, grains from distilleries, weeds from the drains, and, in short, every other convertible article collected in the establishment; and often, in addition, plants such as broom are sown in the lands, expressly for the purpose of being ploughed in when green to increase their fertility, or to be cut for fermentation in the _smoor-hoop_. This latter is constructed with bricks, like a tan-pit, and covered with cement to avoid escape or filtration; and its contents, at the larger establishments, are sold to the farmers at from three to five francs a hogshead, in proportion to the quality. The circle of rotation is observed with equal precision and scientific skill, and generally consists of four or five crops and a clean fallow, but varies, of course, according to the nature of the soil and the articles in demand. The season was too advanced for us to see the majority of the crops upon the ground, the grain being mostly housed; but those which were still in the field were of the most luxuriant quality. Pasturage, there was comparatively little; but clover, the chef-d’œuvre of Flemish husbandry, whence it was introduced into England, we saw in high perfection. Some plants which are not usual in Great Britain were to be seen in great abundance; large fields of tobacco, hemp, colza or rape-seed, which is largely sown for crushing, buck-wheat or _sarrasin_, (probably another importation of the Crusaders) from which they make a rich and nutritious bread. Beans and feeding crops, especially carrots, which the sandy lands produce luxuriantly, and turnips, appeared to be favourites especially near the villages.