ON THE MANAGEMENT OF GRASS LANDS IN ENGLAND. 109 



become that a tenant could not be found who would take it at 

 any price. The then proprietor was not inclined to spend much 

 money in improvements ; the agent was at his wit's end to know 

 what to do with it, when fortunately a shrewd north countryman 

 turned up and agreed to take it at what he thought a very low 

 rent. After a trial of two years he was compelled to go to the 

 agent and ask for a reduction of rent, otherwise he had deter- 

 mined to give up the farm, and the agent, not knowing what to 

 do with the land, agreed to the tenant's terms. The tenant at 

 once set to work to get the land in condition, which he did at 

 great cost, and laid it down in pasture. On this farm there is 

 land which now fattens a bullock per acre every summer, which, 

 under arable culture, would have ruined any man at a rent of 

 23s. per acre. The farm has, within the last few years, been re- 

 valued and the rent considerably raised, still the tenant does not 

 complain. 



ON THE MANAGEMENT OF GRASS LANDS IN ENGLAND. 



By David Robie, Bedford. 



[Premiuvi — Ten Sovereigns.] 



In any comparison of the husbandry of England with that of 

 Scotland, there is no feature more noticeable than the great 

 extent of permanent pasture and meadow in the south that is 

 not broken up in rotation. What is ploughed land continues 

 ploughed land, and what is pasture, with rare exceptions, 

 remains pasture. There is a prejudice against breaking up old 

 grass land, which has doubtless arisen partly from the difficulty 

 of insuring a close pile of forage plants and herbage, when it is 

 wished to lay down the land to seeds again for a short perma- 

 nency; or merely for two or three years' grazing on the Scotch 

 convertible system. Circumstances, indeed, alter cases, and good 

 pastures and good crops are both desirable and profitable. Old 

 grass, when broken up, grows giant crops of corn and roots, and 

 in exceptional cases, heavy clay lands have been ploughed for 

 cropping, and adjacent fields laid down, whereby the revenues 

 of the farm were greatly augmented. Where there are no restric- 

 tions on the occupier, the temptation to plough old grass fields is 

 strong, and but for repeating the white crops too often in an 

 injudicious manner, and failing to recruit by manures, the result 

 in not a few cases has been a gain. In driving lately over the 

 Oxford clays of Buckinghamshire, we saw no end of fields, the 

 chief features of which were hassocks, thistles, rushes, spongy 

 wetness, and ant hills; and seeing that tillage farming is making 

 so rapid advances, it is not supposable that fields so unsightly 

 are to remain as they were left us by our forefathers, especially 



