REPORT OF THE AGRICULTURE OF AYPvSRTRE. 65 



case 25 years since, and from the vast increase in the grinding of 

 Indian corn, beans, &c, it is evident that house feeding is now 

 being supplied more liberally than formerly — although, with 

 some exceptional cases, scant enough still ; yet these facts only 

 prove, that, if with, at least, equal extent of grass land to the 

 cow, and no proportional increase of milk over the season from 

 the extra house food, &c, is perceptible, but rather the reverse, 

 the pastures must be greatly deteriorated in feeding power. It 

 is not to be expected that the cold-clayish pastures of most 

 parts of Ayrshire, are to be as good as those of Forfarshire for 

 instance, or even of the conterminous shires of Wigtown and 

 Kirkcudbright, but at all events they might be generally a great 

 deal better than they really are. Give up saving rye-grass seed 

 for sale and exportation, and sow down the lands in a fair state 

 of fertility with a good selection of fresh grass seeds and peren- 

 nial clovers, and some thousands more of milch cows might be 

 kept on the same extent of rotation grass, as well as the average 

 yield from all the cows considerably increased. 



The old rage for taking as many white crops as the land will 

 possibly yield without entailing actual loss, still holds strong 

 sway over the minds of many in Ayrshire. When restricted to 

 two corn crops on their outfield lands, it was just this rage 

 which caused them by-and-bye to begin seeding the hay crop, 

 and taking even a second crop of seed from the second year's 

 grass sometimes to the utter ruination of the pasture.* The 

 seed raisers do not appear to care how barren the soil may be 

 when laid down in grass, seemingly expecting that grass (such 

 as it is) can grow well enough without the requisite food being- 

 present in the soil. Absurd nonsense. To raise good grass the 

 land must be in as high a state of fertility as for good crops of 

 oats or wheat ; indeed, good condition is even more needful for 

 the former, as the best pasture grasses will not grow at all ex- 

 cept on fertile soils. The particular degree of strength of the 

 soil is of less consequence provided it be in sufficiently "good 

 heart." All grass lands in course of time become intermixed 

 with weeds and mosses more or less ; but from the system of 

 sowing only ryegrass, and that too the most annual kind of it 

 (the heaviest serd), the bare spots of soil in the first year after 

 the hay, offer every convenience for the seeds of weeds and 

 mosses to take root and flourish upon. By having the land 

 covered thickly from the very first with good grass and clover 

 roots, mosses and weeds may be greatly and for long avoided, 



* The ryegrass seeds sold as " second crop " are in reality inferior in peren- 

 nity, and as pasture plants, to the seed of the first year, as in all cases where 

 " second crop seed " is taken, the first year's grass has been seeded previously. 

 Second year's seed would be superior, of course, if the first 'year's grass was 

 grazed or early green cut. 



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