THE FIRST AND FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLE IN AGRICULTURE. 9 



the ladder to profitable farming. As at present enforced, the 

 rotation system is gradually but surely diminishing the produce 

 from the cultivated area of this country. It is surely one of the 

 greatest blunders in modern agriculture to prevent farmers from 

 improving grass land, or from putting it down to permanent 

 pasture, which all rotations do. I know that there is such a 

 thing as a six-course rotation, with three crops of grass, and only 

 one crop of oats following ; but this does not encourage a farmer 

 in the use of natural grasses, and without these grasses top- 

 dressing grass land is not done to the best advantage. To put 

 land into a liiglily-iw.yiwj condition (and why not attain to tJiis?) 

 less than seven years in grass comes short of the desired end. 

 A five, six, or seven shift is a neatly-calculated, schoolboy-like 

 transaction, without giving a farmer scope for his skill or a 

 chance to better his circumstances. It is different when you 

 break up a seven-year-old grass park : a vegetable manure is 

 then obtained that will last longer than byre dung. Supposing 

 a farmer enters to an exhausted farm, where vegetable matter, 

 living and dead, is very meagre, and at the expiry of his lease 

 leaves the land full of vecretable matter, both livin^^ and dead. 

 Query — How is this vegetable matter to be valued, so that the 

 farmer may receive compensation for it ? If he is not to receive 

 full value for fine old grass, he will certainly plough it up ; and 

 if he is not to receive value for dead ves^etable matter left in 

 excess, he will certainly use it up. This, in my opinion, is a more 

 important question than compensation for unexhausted manures, 

 because it is from vegetable matter that the bulk and weight of 

 all the crops of the farm are derived. It is essential, therefore, 

 to profitable farming that it be in the soil in large quantity ; 

 consequently, it is of prior importance and of more value to any 

 holding than special manures. These manures have never been 

 known to supply the place of vegetable matter. They have 

 never been known to add fertility to the soil when applied to 

 raise a turnip crop or a grain crop ; they have only been known 

 as the means of raising larger crops to be carried away. Let 

 nie ask, then, upon what grounds is it proposed to value these 

 manures to an ingoing tenant ? 



From experience and observation I have come to be of opinion 

 that cultivation more than 500 feet above sea-level is not profit- 

 able on an average of seasons in the north of Aberdeenshire, and 

 that the same land would pay better under improved pasture. 

 In Shetland there is very little cultivation more than 100 feet 

 above sea-level, and the greater part is under 50 feet The 

 consequence is that almost invariably the harvest commences in 

 August, and is finished before the crops in the high-lying 

 districts of Aberdeenshire and IJanHshire are cut 



