USES TO WHICH [Chap. 



Is no hay to be dragged out of the rack and to 

 be trampled under foot. If I were a farmer^ even 

 on a down farm^ having watered meadow at- 

 tached to it, I would never make a handful of 

 hay, that most troublesome, expensive, and most 

 ticklish of all crops. Near great towns, where 

 hav is dear, and where grass is not valuable in 

 proportion, or where the meadows are sure to rot 

 sheep, hay may be made ; but, on farms in ge- 

 neral, not one handful can be made profitably. 

 Meadows should be used as pasture ; wholly as 

 pasture. There might possibly be an exception 

 in favour of sainfoin on very poor shallow and hilly 

 land. A little bit of lucerne, near the farm-yard, 

 as summer feed for pigs, horses, and neat cattle; 

 but, with these exceptions, the corn, with its 

 tops and stalks, used in one shape or another, 

 most advantageously supplant the hay. Mr. 

 Clark, who has invented the expmision shoe 

 for horses, and who keeps what he calls the 

 Veterinary Infirmary and Expansion Shoeing 

 Forge, in Hatfield-street, Stamford-street, Black- 

 friars, perceived, when he was in America, 

 how well the horses travelled without shoes ; 

 which led him to think that a great part of the 

 lameness of horses arose in this country, where 

 shoes, from the hardness of the roads, are ren- 

 dered necessary, from the unyielding nature a.nd 

 construction of the shoe. He has, therefore, in- 



