VARIATIONS IN PASTURES 



By C. T. GIMINGHAM 



University of Bristol 



A most important place is taken by pasture and meadow land 

 in British husbandry ; indeed, if the area of each crop grown 

 throughout the country be a measure of its relative importance, 

 grass comes before all others. Thus the annual returns of the 

 acreage of land permanently under grass in Great Britain have 

 shown a steady increase during the last sixty years, the area 

 having been enlarged since 1870 from 12,072,856 to 17,446,870 

 acres, an addition of 5,374,014 acres. In 191 1, the returns show 

 that of a total of 32,094,658 acres under crops of all kinds, the 

 area devoted to permanent grass was 2,799,082 acres in excess 

 of that occupied by all other kinds of crop put together. In 

 Ireland, the proportion of grass to arable land is almost exactly 

 two to one; and in some English counties the land is all but 

 entirely occupied by pasture : for example, Somersetshire in 

 191 1 returned 682,342 acres as under grass and only 170,451 

 acres as arable land. All these figures are exclusive of the 

 rough grass land catalogued as " Mountain and Heath Land 

 used for Grazing " which in Great Britain amounts to another 

 12,875,660 acres. 



Much of the large area referred to is grass land of some- 

 what inferior quality, this being true especially of the part laid 

 down within recent years. Although some of the heavy clay 

 soils, too expensive to cultivate, in various parts of the country, 

 which were converted into permanent grass land are now 

 excellent pasture, yet most of the land was originally very poor 

 arable and having been allowed to fall down to grass without 

 special care or treatment is at present worth little for grazing 

 purposes. Under proper treatment, a good deal of the poorer 

 pasture land in the country is unquestionably open to consider- 

 able improvement ; well-planned practical experiments that 



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