CROPS. 277 



aown with a sufficient quantity and variety of seeds, a sward 

 produced by the second year sufficiently compact and strong. 

 One great advantage which would arise from cultivating lands 

 in grass would be, to use up as manure the roots, fragments, and 

 remains, of the grass sward, which have been some time accumu 

 lating, and which are in themselves the natural means of enrich 

 ing the land. The produce of such land in grass is generally 

 much inferior in value to what it would be in a regular rotation. 

 Where, however, it lies in the immediate neighborhood of large 

 cities, from which plenty of manure for top-dressing can be pro 

 cured, at a reasonable expense, the breaking it up might, with 

 much more reason, be objected to. It may be said, likewise, 

 excepting where it is grown for the market, that hay is in much 

 less request in England than with us. Here turnips or other 

 succulent food is in abundance ; chopped straw is substituted for 

 hay ; and cattle are fatted, and horses maintained, wholly upon 

 turnips and straw. The system pursued on the model farm of 

 Lord Ducie, in Gloucestershire, is, to have no land in permanent 

 grass, but to bring every portion of the farm under an estab 

 lished rotation of cropping. The same system is pursued in 

 those districts of what may well be called model farming, the 

 county of Northumberland, on the border, and the Lothians, in 

 Scotland. 



The expediency of breaking up grass or pasture lands, and 

 converting them into arable land, can only be determined by va 

 rious considerations, and many of them of a local nature. Many 

 of the lands in England, now devoted to the pasturage of sheep, 

 and yielding a very scanty herbage, the soil being very thin, 

 upon a stratum of chalk, and the aspect exposed, would, if bro 

 ken up, produce very scanty crops ; and it would require many 

 years to restore them again as pasture lands. There are other 

 lands, too, of a sandy character, now yielding in pasture very 

 little feed, which would scarcely repay the cultivation, and per 

 haps be even more impoverished by it. The dairy farmers, too, 

 are generally persuaded perhaps a mere prejudice that good 

 cheese can be made only from old pasture that has been for years 

 undisturbed. Nor can it be safely recommended to break up grass 

 land now yielding a tolerable crop of hay, unless the farmer has 

 the determination and means of improving it by thorough-drain 

 ing and manuring, lest it should be left in a much worse state 



VOL. n. 



24 



