GRASS-LAND AND ARABLE 737 



national interest for farmers at home chiefly to concen- 

 trate upon producing a few years hence, and still less 

 what the country's needs may be a decade or a 

 generation later. The nation that can devise a system 

 of agriculture, therefore, that can be rapidly made 

 chiefly subservient to any sudden and unforeseen or 

 unforeseeable need, without at the same time disorgan- 

 izing the industry, is the nation which will achieve 

 permanent and lasting security against food shortage. 

 Our old and inelastic system of farming, on the basis 

 of orthodox arable rotations which were deemed to be 

 the corner-stone of good farming and inviolate, and 

 milk and beef production on permanent grass-land, 

 has broken down under the dire necessities of the 

 times. 



At present systems of farming may almost be said 

 to be in abeyance, but the future of agriculture largely 

 depends upon the evolution of new, and, as I have 

 said, more flexible systems. It is to be hoped, there- 

 fore, that agricultural science will devote more and 

 more attention to the broader aspects of farming, in 

 order to be in a position to give the cultivator a 

 definite lead in the matter of making the best possible 

 practical use of the results of recent researches on the 

 problems that underlie production. It is obvious 

 that, as our knowledge of these problems advances, 

 rotations and systems of farming evolved without the 

 aid of exact science must be replaced by systems per- 

 haps as fundamentally different from the old as are 

 modern methods of locomotion from those of our 



grandfathers. 



R. G. S. 



