As already mentioned, the greater portion of Hertfordshire, that is to say, most of the chalk area, exclusive of the downs, commons, woods, and private parks, was in former years devoted to corn, for the cultivation of which its soil is particularly well suited. Indeed the county had the reputation of growing not only the best barley for malting, but likewise the best wheat-straw (that is to say, the hardest and whitest) for plaiting. The wheat itself was also of specially good quality and hardness, and there was likewise an abundance of mills in which it could be converted into flour. A noteworthy feature of Hertfordshire agriculture is the practice of mixing chalk with the soils, especially where they are clayey; this resulting in a decided increase in fertility. A century and a half ago wheat, barley, and oats formed the chief cereal crops; beans being better suited to the Vale of Aylesbury, while peas are profitable only on the very light chalky grounds. Clover, lucerne, trefoil, turnips, and (in later times) swedes and mangold are also extensively grown. In this connection it is interesting to note that the first crops of red clover and of swede turnips ever grown in this country were sown at Broadby Farm, near Berkhampstead; a spot celebrated in literature as having been the home of Peter the Wild Boy in 1725. A certain amount of grass land was intermingled with that under cereal and root cultivation; while, as mentioned in earlier sections, most of the heavy land in the south and south-east of the county is under grass. “Hertfordshire farming,” observes a recent writer, “has undergone little material change since Ellis’s description of it in 1732; the hay-crop has become a more prominent feature perhaps, potatoes on the lighter soils have gained a leading place in the rotation, and the standard of fertility has been raised all round; otherwise a farm on the high chalk-plateau was farmed in 1732 pretty much on the same lines as it is to-day. Ellis gives a list of the chief weeds, ‘crow-garlick, wild oat, carlock, poppy, mayweed, bindweed, dock, crow-needle, black bent’: they are not less troublesome nor any nearer extinction at the present time, the last grass in particular being very characteristic of corn-land on the ‘clay with flints’.” [Illustration: A Hertfordshire Farm near Rickmansworth] Every year the Board of Agriculture publishes a return in which the number of acres in each county devoted to each particular kind of crop is duly recorded, the classification adopted being as follows, viz.: corn crops; green crops; clover, sainfoin, and grasses for hay; grass not for hay; flax; hops; small fruits; and orchards. Such land as produces none of these crops is classed as bare fallow, of which Hertfordshire in 1905 possessed 14,275 acres.