112 



PERMANENT AND TEMPORARY PASTURES 



instrument of impoverishing grass land more quickly than can 

 overstocking ; still, it is not so much the cutting of a meadow 

 which is injurious, but withholding the top-di-essing of manure 

 or compost which all mown grass should annually receive. 



Again, immense damage is done to some meadows by 

 cutting the crops for hay very late in the season. Many of 

 the grasses have time to form and ripen their seeds, and 

 nothing exhausts plants so much. Some of the finer grasses 

 cannot safely be taxed in this way. They may endure the 

 ordeal once or twice, but if the drain on their resources is 

 frequently repeated they gradually dwindle away. So long as 

 these grasses are mown early, or grazed, they are perfectly 

 perennial, as is conclusively proved by their continued exist- 

 ence in some of the finest old pastures of the kingdom where 

 they have never been allowed to seed. To manage any 

 pasture or meadow in such a way as to exterminate some of its 

 most valuable and nutritious grasses is surely killing the goose 

 that lays the golden egg. And this is exactly what is done by 

 constant greed for the rick. Of course an early crop means 

 a smaller bulk of hay, but unless the turf is exceptional in 

 character the quality is higher than from a later cutting,^ and 



1 In the Journal of the Bath and West and Southern Counties Society for 1890-91, 

 page 375, it was suggested by the editor that I should undertake a series of experi- 

 ments with the object of determining ' the value of aftermath, according to the period 

 of the first cutting ; also to determine the relative food-producing powers of a meadow 

 when various times of cutting were resorted to.' I gladly assented to the suggestion, 

 and my friend Dr. Voelcker, the Consulting Chemist to the Society, was kind enough 

 to undertake the chemical part of the experiment. The results were published in 

 the Society's Journal, Vol. II., Fourth Series, from which I have extracted the 

 following comparative table of five plots in the same field, having the same aspect, soil, 

 and other conditions calculated to ensure uniformity of growth : — 



Anaxtses of Grass from the Piots — First Cutting. In Dried (at 212° F.) State. 



