Management of Grass Land. 261 



snaintain the large proportion of permanent grass which is to be 

 found in England. Ornament, amusement, and long-established 

 custom have each a certain degree of influence in deciding this 

 question ; but the cause which has more weight than the other 

 three united, is the knowledge on the part of landowners that 

 there is a store of accumulated fertility in old grass-land which, 

 were it allowed to be ploughed out, would be entirely at the 

 mercy of the tenant. Unless, therefore, the system of long 

 leases should be generally adopted, under the protection of which 

 landlords might give up the grass for the sake of a permanent 

 increase of rent, it is probable that the " old grass " will long 

 remain in its present state. It is consequently of great import- 

 ance to call attention to the most available means of increasing 

 the produce of that large proportion of it which is now making 

 a miserable return both to landlord and tenant. 



We will first take the case of meadow land. It is almost 

 needless to say that if the owner of meadow land have a sufficient 

 supply of farmyard manure, to be able to give it a good dressing 

 every year, he wants no other improver, and I have already- 

 expressed myself in favour of applying it to the land imme- 

 diately after mowing. This must be taken, however, with some 

 qualification, as, if not sufficiently mellow to break up easily into 

 small fragments, or if the land have a sandy or gravelly subsoil, 

 the manure should not be put on till the approach of winter. Such 

 plenty, liovvever, of farmyard manure is comparatively rare, — 

 almost as rare as it is common for a man to have so little of this 

 universal fertilizer for his grass that he sees the necessity for 

 adding something to his heap, and sits down to consider what 

 it shall be. The first point to decide is whether he is most 

 anxious to increase the quantity or the quality of the produce. 

 It is a curious fact that on any old grass land of average quality, 

 we can, by varying the application, exercise very extensive con- 

 trol over the quality of the grass, and even over the kind of 

 plant which shall form the bulk of the herbage. I had my 

 attention drawn to this subject many years ago when draining an 

 old meadovv on strong land. After the work was completed, some 

 of the subsoil was necessarily left on the surface for a foot or 

 two on each side of the newly-made drains. This produced so 

 remarkable a crop of meadow foxtail, a grass which was not at 

 all plentiful in the field previously, that at mov/ing time the field 

 appeared as if ruled with double lines, one on each side of every 

 drain. On another occasion a liberal dressing of very strong 

 liquid manure — from a tank attached to my cattle-yard — applied 

 to light land, produced such a heavy crop of white and red clover 

 that the grass when mown almost appeared to consist of clovers 

 alone, and the swathes were so heavy as very nearly to touch one 



