368 EUROPEAN AGRICULTURE. 



rushes, is to be lightly and evenly laid over growing grass, m 

 the proportion of about a ton to a ton and a half per acre. At 

 the end of a fortnight, it must be raked up in heaps like hay 

 cocks, the grass eaten off by cattle, and the covering again relaid. 

 This is necessary in the growing season, otherwise the herbage 

 will grow through, by which the action will cease ; the grass 

 will also become entangled with the covering. If the land is 

 good, the grass may generally be eaten off by cattle before the 

 covering is relaid ; if not, at the end of the next fortnight (more 

 or less depending on the richness of the land, the season, and the 

 weather,) it should be done, and the covering relaid again ; and 

 repeated at about these periods through the season. If straw be 

 the material used, it will last through the whole summer. In 

 the autumn it is the practice to rake it off when dry, carry it 

 away, and stack it for winter litter. Ground under the action of 

 fibrous covering, we find from our returns, will keep three times 

 the quantity of cattle as ground not so treated. This experience 

 seems in keeping with our experiments on weight and measure, 

 of the produce thus obtained.&quot; 



CXI. GENERAL REFLECTIONS. 



I have deemed it proper to lay these various results, resting as 

 they do upon the most respectable authority, before my readers, 

 to whose knowledge they might not otherwise come. If they 

 have no other beneficial effect, they will stimulate inquiry, and 

 prompt to other experiments. The philosophy of these results is 

 as yet in obscurity. The facts in art and science which are con 

 tinually disclosing themselves to our investigations are most 

 extraordinary and wonderful, and show that we are yet only in 

 the infancy of knowledge. The glimmerings of the early dawn 

 will presently advance to meridian splendor. It is the province 

 of science to investigate the causes of things ; this is the work 

 of the human mind ; and how can it be more worthily or rev 

 erently employed? 



I have been charged, more than once in the progress of these 



