GRASS-LAND AND ARABLE 135 



be balanced with other and appropriate feeding-stuffs, 

 which implies both the possession of the other feeding- 

 stuffs and a proper knowledge of their composition. 

 In times of shortage, therefore, the best-informed 

 farmer in the world may find himself in grave diffi- 

 culties unless he has supplies of meadow hay to draw 

 upon. With a little more knowledge it should, how- 

 ever, be quite easy to produce the absolute equivalent 

 of meadow hay from a young ley. For grasses and 

 clovers produce new and fresh herbage every year, be 

 the individual plants two years old or twenty years 

 old. It should therefore only be a matter of decreas- 

 ing the clovers (which can always be done on certain 

 fields) and establishing a sufficiently heterogeneous 

 herbage on your ley, and it is largely for this reason 

 that we want to introduce strains of Meadow Fescue,. 

 Meadow Foxtail, and other grasses capable of rapidly 

 establishing themselves. There is, however, little 

 or no accumulated knowledge as to the relative di- 

 gestibility and palatability of herbage plants, and 

 just as we know to a marked degree what simple 

 feeding-stuffs are complementary to each other, so 

 we want to know what herbage plants are comple- 

 mentary to each other. 



I will now conclude my lecture by referring in a 

 little more detail to the practical side of farming on 

 the temporary-ley basis in order that the real signifi- 

 cance of the theory of the temporary ley may be 

 appreciated. I must again insist, therefore, that the 

 adoption of this method of farming means far more 

 than putting a few casual fields down to a temporary 

 ley. My argument is in favour of converting our 

 grassland districts into arable districts but not arable 

 on the old four-course rotation lines. It would be 

 arable with grass as the pivoting crop, and so 

 designed that a part of the farm, large in proportion 



