TEMPORARY PASTURES 123 



with advantage always be in artificial grass. A great saving 

 would be effected in tillage operations, horseflesh, and labour. 

 The land would break up at the end of the term in excellent 

 condition and full of clover roots as a store of nourishment 

 for the succeeding grain crop. The custom of maintaining 

 agricultural holdings that are almost entirely arable, or almost 

 entirely pastoral, has failed to meet the necessities of our time. 

 What is wanted now is a combination of arable and pastoral 

 husbandry, so that when corn does not pay and stock is profit- 

 able, or vice versa, each occupier may obtain benefit from one 

 branch of his business. The grazier would be profited in being 

 able to winter his own stock instead of selling it to make 

 a winter's manure for the arable farmer. On the other hand, 

 the arable farmer would not then, as now, be compelled to 

 sell his stock immediately his roots were exhausted, or pay the 

 grazier to summer the animals for him. When neither arable 

 nor pastoral farms yield a profit, the system I am advocating 

 has the merit of reducing expenses to a minimum. 



The specialising of agriculture has been carried to injuri- 

 ous excess. Great arable farms, without enough pasture to 

 keep half a dozen cows, and large grazing farms that are want- 

 ing in sufficient arable to grow straw and roots for winter 

 consumption, should both be regarded as evils. The admirable 

 system, pursued in Lancashire and in Scotland, of annually 

 laying away in artificial grasses a proportion of each farm for 

 a period of three or four years, is so successful that it is 

 surprising the practice has not long since been adopted all over 

 the country. Instead of this, the sowing of Broad Clover 

 alone is still the rule, and the admixture even of Rye Grass the 

 exception. In comparatively few instances is it usual to sow 

 with the clovers such heavy-cropping varieties as Rye Grass, 

 Foxtail, and Timothy, without which the best results cannot 

 be obtained from the alternate system. 



The admission of corn into this country without duty, 

 with the present high rate of labour, renders it impossible 



