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THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



tendency to a heavy weight at an early age, certainly not surpassed by any other breed. The exertions 

 of the Salopians, however, have not been directed to size and weight only. The Shropshire sheep unite 

 with these two recommendations— excellent form and symmetry, first-class wool of thick pile and great 

 length of staple, well-formed good dark brown heads, deep chests, famous legs of mutton, with a good 

 dock set high on a straight long spine. 



The class of " Short-woolled sheep not being Southdowns," now affords the Shropshire breeders an 

 opportunity of exhibiting their stock on fair terms at the meetings of the Royal Agricultural Society. 

 At Salisbury in this section the Shropshire Downs took three of the prizes for rams, out of the four 

 offered. At Birmingham, as we often had to record, the show of this kind of sheep is one of the chief 

 features of the yard. 



HIGHLAND PASTURES. 



BY CUTHBERT \V. JOHNSON, ESQ., F.R.S. 



The grasses almost of necessity are the occu- 

 pants of our hill counties. The low mean tem- 

 perature of these upland fields, their abundant 

 atmospheric moisture, suflSciently accounts for this 

 fact. The more we recede, however, from the eastern- 

 side of our island, towards the west, the more 

 elevated become the sites of the productive pastures. 

 The immediate neighbourhood of this town (Car- 

 narvon), where I am now writing, affords a good 

 illustration of this fact. On the sides of the 

 mountain range, of v/hich Snowdon is the chief 

 summit, are found in every little available space 

 small enclosures, extending to great elevations ; 

 wherever, indeed, between the slowly-decomposing 

 rocks the soil has found a space sufficiently free 

 from protruding blocks to form a small field, there 

 we observe a wall of rough stones enclosing a little 

 pasture, the grass of which (in the middle of Sep- 

 tember) appeared abundant in quantity, but of 

 rather a poor description. There seemed no pains 

 taken to improve either the produce of this grass 

 or its quality; and as the same remark applies to 

 several other districts besides this, it may be useful 

 to dwell a little upon the means by which these 

 may be fertilized. The grass lands of our islands 

 are, generally speaking, the worst farmed of any 

 of our fields. Tliese are commonly left to Nature's 

 care : if she supplies naturally good soils, if she 

 pours down upon these copious showers of rain, if 

 she supphes them with a warm atmosphere ever 

 surcharged vi'ith insensible moisture, or if she 

 covers them periodically with the turbid flood- 

 waters of her rivers, then the produce of grass is 

 considerable. Man has little or nothing to do, and 

 he manages to perform his easy task with great and 

 complacent success. But if the land is not so 

 good, if the subsoil is tenacious, the climate more 

 dry, then the occupier is still wont to be content 

 with a less produce of grass, still relies upon Nature, 

 and does but little to aid her bounty. This is 



the more remarkable, since very successful and 

 extensive operations have been accomplished to 

 increase the production of some of our pasturage 

 districts. These improvements were originally 

 suggested, as many other excellent agricultural 

 operations have been, and will hereafter be, from 

 chemical considerations. Cheshire, placed in a 

 moist and warm atmosphere, possesses a breadth 

 of pasturage celebrated for its productiveness: 

 here are few corn farms — grass is the staple of the 

 country; hence come those noble herds of cows; 

 those excellent cheeses, which have for ages been 

 so celebrated. Time, however, rendered even these 

 happily-situated meads sensibly less productive. It 

 was found that the effects of a constant export of 

 cheese and meat gradually impoverished the soil, 

 to an extent which the home-made manure of the 

 stock was quite unable to remedy. The chsmist 

 was appealed to ; and he, happily, suggested that 

 one main substance steadily removed from the 

 soil in the cheese, and in the bones of the stock 

 bred on the Cheshire pastures, was the phosphate 

 of lime, or bone earth, and that if so, substances 

 containing considerable proportions of that salt 

 would prove excellent fertilizers for these grass 

 lands. This was the origin of the application of 

 crushed bones by the Cheshire farmers— a manure 

 which was found not only to increase the pro- 

 ductiveness of the pastures, but also caused a re- 

 markable improvement in the quality of the 

 herbage. Here cause and effect were more than 

 commonly traceable. The constant removal from 

 the pasture, of the phosphate of lime, rendered 

 those plants in which this salt is an essential in- 

 gredient incapable of successfully contending for 

 the possession of the soil with those inferior grasses 

 to whose luxuriant growth its presence in certain 

 proportions is not so very essential. Other modes 

 of dressing pasture land with impure phosphate of 

 lime have also been profitably adopted. Peruvian 



