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64
iii. rural husbandry.
crop which, in proportion to the total harvest of the country, was of still smaller
proportions, they are now cultivated on a larger area than that occupied by the
rest of the Swedish cereals together, and give a good half of the total
grain-crops of the kingdom, especially if we reckon its share in the meslin-harvest.
The oat-harvests exceeded the needs of the population at an earlier period
than any other kind of grain, and ever since the beginning of the decade
1820—30, there has been a surplus for export, which gradually — and
especially from the sixties — became very great indeed, but the growth of the
cattle-farming industry led to ever-increasing demands on the oat-harvests, and
since the middle of the eighties the export of oats has been steadily diminishing,
while the imports have risen to such an extent that, from the year 1902, they
have exceeded the exports.
As regards the extent to which oats are cultivated in different parts of the
country, this grain forms, to a certain degree, a contrast to barley, as oats form
the chief crops principally in the south-western part of the country, from
Värmland to Halland, while they are less predominant in the eastern and northern
läns. This is the result, in part, of the liking barley has for soils rich in
lime, soils which, on the other hand, are less suitable for oats; we have seen
that this preference of barley for such land is mostly observable in the marly
districts of Gottland, Öland, South-Western and North-Eastern Skåne, and
Östergötland. The predominance possessed by oats in other provinces depends
especially on the lesser demands it makes on the character of the soil — the region
mentioned above, lying in South-Western Sweden, has, on the whole, a poorer
soil than that of the marl-lands of the eastern läns (cf. pp. 35 foil.) The
smaller demands made by oats on the percentage of nutritive constituents of the
soil have led to this cereal being less often cultivated on newly manured ground;
it is generally the last course in the rotation of crops, after the soil, having
produced a succession of other harvests, has lost most of the fertility given to
it by the manure, together with other favourable conditions obtained from
fallowing, or by the cultivation of root-crops, in combination with a thorough
labouring of the ground. Oats, too, grow better than other grains on humous
or peat soils that are poor in mineral constituents, and they form the chief crop
on cultivated peat- and moorlands; in consequence of this fact, the cultivation
of oats has greatly increased during the last forty years, simultaneously with
the increase of the moor-area laid under the plough.
As a result of what has just been said, we find that oats are sown the
thickest of all cereals and give, proportionately, the smallest yield of grain.
The great amount of oats used for sowing, is, however, if compared with that
of barley, so far illusory that one hectoliter of oats weighs less than 50 kg,
while the same amount of two-rowed barley weighs about 70 kg, and six-rowed
barley from 60 to 65 kg; 4 hectoliters of sowing oats per hectare, therefore,
are not more than equal to 3’2 hectoliters of ordinary barley. The fact that
the amount of grain used for seed in the north of Sweden is, throughout,
greater than that used in the southern parts of the country is very probably due
to the fact that the seed is not so well covered with soil, as, in that part
of the country, the seed is sown by hand and not drilled; but the chief reason
must certainly be that, in the northern parts of Sweden, the sowing seed has
not attained to full maturity, and so does not possess perfect power of
germination. The inferiority of oats in respect to the weight and value of the grain
is made up for, to some extent, by the greater value of the straw, which, as
fodder, is superior to other kinds of straw, and, after hay, forms the most
important roughing for all kinds of cattle.
Many different varieties of oats are cultivated, with white, yellow, grey,
light- or dark-brown coloured grain. At an earlier date, dark-brown varieties
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