THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



363 



parlour here and a kitchen there, and no one would 

 think of letting one encroach on the other ; so 

 there is a feeding pasture here and inferior grass 

 land there, and as such they arc allowed to rem un; 

 and if these lands are not ploughed out or per- 

 mitted sensibly to deteriorate, this is considered 

 quite good enough management for the grass, even 

 on a farm where the tenant is introducing the most 

 enlightened and excellent management into the 

 cultivation of his turnips and his corn. 



" Such general results must spring from equally 

 general causes, and we believe one of the most m- 

 fluential reasons to be, that the returns from capital 

 laid out in the improvement of grass land do not 

 come so directly into the pocket as those from 

 corn, and are apt, therefore, to be underrated or 

 lost sight of. Few farmers sell hay; and if by more 

 liberal treatment of their meadow land the hay- 

 stack increases in size so as to effect a saving in 

 horse-corn and bring the store cattle into the 

 pastures in spring in a more healthy and thriving 

 state, or if the improvement made in a poor pasture 

 enables the occupier to rear more young stock and 

 in better condition, still the return on the outlay is 

 mixed up with other questions, such as the market 

 price of lean and fat stock at the times of sale and 

 purchase, and it becomes extremely difficult to 

 separate it from the general profit and loss account 

 of the whole farm. In short, the farmer does not 

 put the money derived from the improvement of 

 his grass land directly into his pocket, and he is, 

 therefore, not very sure whether what he lays out 

 in this way ever finds its way back or not. The 

 result of a doubt on such a question it is not diffi- 

 cult to foresee : so the grass land has to content 

 itself with what the half-starved cattle are com- 

 pelled to leave behind them, added to a liberal 

 allowance of atmospheric advantages, and its con- 

 tinued poverty is a standing proof that these re- 

 sources are not of the richest, and will not bring 

 us any nearer to the two blades of grass." 



Let us, however, get over these cloudy modes of 

 reasoning; let us at least endea.vour to try if these 

 things can be truly said of us and of our grass 

 lands ; and let us not forget that it is always well 

 and profitable to test the truth of such assertions 

 of men of intelligence and of science. And if we 

 can "^screw our courage to " the sticking- place" 

 amid lowering prices, then let us not forget that 

 many a most valuable trial may as well be made 

 for the outlay of a few shillings, as for pounds, if 

 we will but content ourselves with experimenta- 

 lizing on plots of quarter-acres instead of commen- 

 cing with larger portions of the field. It is not the 

 extent, but the care bestowed to exclude disturbinr/ 

 causes, that renders an agricultural experiment 

 valuable. It is this care which causes the trial of 



Mr. J. B. Lawcs to be commonly so noticeable: his 

 results, and those of others with a similar object, 

 are thus alluded to by Mr. II. S. Thompson {ibid, 

 page 252) — they well illustrate the well-known and 

 remarkable fact that certain top-dressings most 

 materially alter the quality of the herbage of grass 

 lands. He says : "The sheet of white clover pro- 

 duced by a heavy dressing of lime on moorlands 

 and other inferior pasture, where white clover had 

 scarcely been seen before, is well known to upland 

 farmers, and it would be easy to multiply instances 

 of a similar kind ; but none of those I have ever 

 seen can be com])ared in point of variety and dis- 

 tinctness of result with the set of experiments 

 which has now for some years been carried on by 

 Mr. Lawes in his park at Rothamsted, and which 

 I had the opportunity of examining in June, 1857. 

 There might be seen, side by side, strips of the 

 same old meadow, manured with farmyard manure, 

 with alkalies, with phosphates, with ammoniacal 

 salts, and with various combinations of these sub- 

 stances. By comparison with the unmanured 

 grass adjoining, it would be observed that the 

 meadow in its natural state was one of only mode- 

 rate grass-growing capabilities, yet some plots were 

 loaded with a crop of the most bulky of our 

 graminese, such as cocksfoot, rye-grass, foxtail, 

 &c., all growing with a luxuriance which would 

 excite attention even in a waterside meadow of the 

 first class. Side by side with this might be seen a 

 plot nearly covered with clovers, trefoils, and 

 vetches ; whilst the next plot in the series would 

 perhaps scarcely furnish a single head of any of 

 those tribes of plants. It would be difficult for 

 any one who has not witnessed them to imagine 

 the strangeness of the appearance presented by the 

 trial-plots when growing such very different quanti- 

 ties and kinds' of herbage, and the difficulty that 

 would be experienced by a stranger, in persuading 

 himself that they were all produced simply by the ap- 

 plication of different manures to the same meadow. 

 The fact being, then, admitted that the pasture 

 might be improved, let us inquire "how" and 

 "when," What did the Cheshire farmers dis- 

 cover? What do they use for the almost perma- 

 nent improvement of their great dairy farms? 

 what but crushed bones ? The chemist taught 

 them this ; he was not to be mistaken here ; he 

 was well able to show that the continued removal 

 from the land (in the cheese and in the stock) of 

 its phosphate of lime or bone earth, sooner or later 

 exhausted it of this salt — a salt essential to, and 

 always found in the grasses. The Cheshire agri- 

 culturists, therefore, in bones merely restored to 

 the pastures the substance which had, in the bones 

 of the stock and in the milk, &c., been for ages 

 steadily removing. On the importance of this 



c c 2 



