REPORT ON THE AGRICULTURE OF PERTHSHIRE. 183 



any cattle upon it during summer, except the few cows for 

 supplying milk to the family and servants ; whereas, if it were 

 under proper management, every cattle reed and feeding byre 

 should be as full of cattle as they are during winter in the stock- 

 feeding districts ; and there is no district in Scotland capable of 

 turning out the same number of fat cattle. It may be asked, 

 How is this to be carried out ? what is to be done with the turnips 

 and straw with which we fed in winter ? and where are we to get 

 straw for the littering of cattle during such extensive summer- 

 feeding? To this it is answered. Instead of cattle to be fed 

 off in the limited time afforded by the turnips, good two-year- 

 olds should be bought for wintering, and as many of them as 

 justice can be done to, as a heavy stock is required to eat down 

 the clover crops, between the 20th of May and 10th of July, by 

 which time the whole crop should, if possible, be cut once. But 

 in wintering these cattle there must be great economy of straw, 

 as nearly a third of the whole stock of straw must be reserved for 

 litter in summer, when the cattle are soiled in the house ; and 

 as no cattle will be fed fat in winter for sale in spring, there 

 will be less difficulty in giving the winterers fair play, and they 

 should be in good order for the cut clover, which, in a favourable 

 season, may be ready by the 20th of May. When cut so early, 

 the second cutting will be grown by the time the end of the first 

 has been reached; and as a succession of tares will be read} T 

 from that time, there could be no lack of food to carry them 

 on. The queys may be fat by midsummer, and the stots before 

 the end of the grass. The Carse farmer will have two great 

 advantages by such a plan, — he can both buy and sell at any 

 time that he can do so to most advantage, and he will hold 

 the cattle for such a time, and sell them when the markets 

 are not over-supplied, that he may expect a handsome profit. 

 But the principle on which the growth of clover mixed with 

 ryegrass, in a greatly reduced degree, is urged, is, that while the 

 latter is truly a cereal, and exhausting in its effects to a greater 

 or less degree, clover grows with a bulbous tap-root, which, when 

 ploughed up, enriches the land and supplies it with decomposing 

 vegetable matter, so essential to the fertility of strong clay soil. 

 Such being the case, it is clear that the intervening crop of grass 

 in the Carse rotation is restorative only as the clover preponder- 

 ates over the ryegrass. When, as is too often the case, there is 

 little or no clover, and the crop is mainly ryegrass, it must be 

 most exhaustive to the soil; for wheat or barley followed by 

 ryegrass, and then broken up for oats, is as severe a sequence as 

 any three white crops that can be put into land. In England, 

 clover is grown without ryegrass, and attempts to do so in Scotland 

 have been attended with equal success in favourable seasons; 

 but in others, from severe winters and bleak springs, the clover 



