PASTORALE 



Edmund Spenser and his followers, 

 though it degenerated in the arti- 

 ficiality of the 18th century. 



Pastoral drama which ha? been 

 described as the bucolic idyll in 

 dramatic form flourished in Italy 

 from the close of the 15th century, 

 and may be said to have reached 

 its height with Tasso's Aminta, 

 1573, and Guarini's Pastor Fido, 

 1585. Those plays had consider- 

 able influence on the pastoral 

 drama in England, which, however, 

 was marked by artificiality even 

 in its most notable examples, such 

 as Fletcher's The Faithful Shep- 

 herdess, 1610, and Jonson's The 

 Sad Shepherd, 1636. Outstanding 

 examples of pastoral romance are 

 the Diana of the Spaniard Monte- 

 mayor, c. 1559, and Sir Philip 

 Sidney's Arcadia, 1590. In pastoral 

 lyrics the century that followed 

 Spenser was particularly rich. 

 Pastoral setting or allusion has 

 frequently been a convention in 

 the writing of funeral elegies from 

 Spenser's Astrophel, 1586, and 

 Milton's Lycidas, to Matthew Ar- 

 nold's Thyrsis, 1861. See English 

 Pastorals, with introduction by E. 

 K. Chambers, 1906; Pastoral 

 Poetry and Pastoral Drama, W. 

 W. Greg, 1906. 



Pastorale. Musical term denot- 

 ing (1) a 17th century kind of 

 opera with a rural or idyllic sub- 

 ject ; (2) an instrumental piece 

 suggesting by conventional means, 

 such as the use of compound time 

 and of placid and flowing melody, 

 the atmosphere of the country- 

 side. A typical example of this 

 kind is the pastoral symphony in 

 The Messiah. Beethoven's Pastoral 

 Symphony, No. 6 in F, is the most 

 extended example. 



Pastoral Letter. Name given 

 to a written communication by a 

 bishop to the clergy and laity of 

 his diocese on matters of Church 

 organization and government. It 

 is so called from the fact that a 

 bishop is regarded as a spiritual 

 shepherd. The Epistles of S. Paul 

 to Timothy and Titus are called 

 pastoral epistles. 



Pastoral Staff. Name for the 

 symbol of authority given to a 

 bishop or abbot at his consecra- 

 tion, also known as a crosier (17. v. ). 

 Some authorities, probably mis- 

 takenly, distinguish them. 



Pasture. Ground used for graz- 

 ing domestic animals. It may be 

 either natural or artificial, per- 

 manent or temporary. An exten- 

 sive form of pasture is the rough 

 mountain and heath land used for 

 grazing. This is for the most part 

 natural herbage, which the farmer 

 has done nothing to create and 

 which he does but little to main- 

 tain. Its improvement takes the 



6OOO 



form of heather-burning every 

 eight or ten years, a certain 

 amount of bracken cutting in the 

 more accessible areas, and open 

 draining where at small expense 

 the surplus water may be got rid of. 



Temporary pastures consist of 

 fields which during one, two, or 

 more years #.re allowed to rest from 

 the plough, and on which the 

 herbage is mown for hay or grazed 

 by stock, or treated partly in one 

 way and partly in the other. In 

 its simplest form a temporary 

 pasture is represented by the year 

 of seeds in the Norfolk four-course 

 rotation. The herbage may con- 

 sist only of clover, usually red, or 

 only of rye-grass, usually Italian, 

 or of a mixture of these two classes 

 of plant. Where the land will grow 

 clover successfully as often as 

 every fourth year, there is much 

 to be said for excluding grass, as 

 clover collects large quantities of 

 nitrogen from the air, and thereby 

 greatly enriches the soil in this 

 essential element of plant food. 



Permanent pasture had its 

 origin in various ways. For the 

 most part it has at one time been 

 under cultivation, as is evident 

 from the fact that the great majo- 

 rity of the fields are in ridge and 

 furrow. In the case of a pasture a 

 hundred years or more of age, it is 

 impossible to obtain details of its 

 early history, but in view of the 

 limited number of pasture plants 

 that were then available as seed, 

 it is fairly safe to assume either 

 that the land was not deliberately 

 sown down, or that it was seeded 

 with rye-grass, with or without the 

 addition of clover. 



Manurial treatment can have an 

 immense influence in the way of 

 encouraging certain species and in 

 repressing others. This fact was 

 first brought prominently out in 

 the experiments at Rothamsted on 

 permanent grass land. The herbage 

 on the plots was much the same 

 to begin with, but after a few years 

 of manurial treatment the plants 

 growing on certain of the areas 

 were strikingly dissimilar. Thus 

 sulphate of ammonia encouraged 

 shallow-rooted plants like agrostis. 

 sheep's fescue, and smooth-stalked 

 meadow grass ; while nitrate of 

 soda stimulated the development 

 of deep-rooted plants such as 

 rough-stalked meadow grass and 

 rye-grass. Nitrogen in any form 

 encouraged grasses and weeds and 

 repressed clovers, while potash 

 stimulated clovers. 



Of late years an agent that is 

 invaluable in the improvement of 

 pasture has been placed at the 

 farmer's disposal, namely, basic 

 slag. Used at the rate of five to 

 ten cwt. per acre, it often doubles 



PASTURE 



or trebles the value of a pasture 

 in two or three years. 



Apart from manures, the main 

 forms of improvement of field 

 pastures are weed-cutting, harrow- 

 ing, spreading mole and ant heaps, 

 and draining. The first operation 

 is performed in the height of 

 summer, the others in winter or 

 spring. Rational stocking, and 

 admixture of sheep and cattle, 

 also tend to improvement ; but 

 all these agencies are of small 

 avail if the pasture is not fed with 

 phosphates, especially basic slag. 



In 1920, of the total area of 76J 

 million acres of dry land com- 

 prised in the United Kingdom, 

 21J million acres were arable and 

 25 million acres under permanent 

 grass, while some 15 million acres 

 were returned as rough or mountain 

 pastures used for grazing. Of the 

 arable land some 5J million acres 

 were under temporary grass, clover, 

 sainfoin, lucerne, etc., of which, in 

 England and Wales, about two- 

 thirds were made into hay, one- 

 third being reserved for grazing. 



During the Great War the ne- 

 cessity for an increase in the 

 amount of home-grown food, 

 chiefly corn and potatoes, resulted 

 in the breaking up in England and 

 Wales of nearly 1 million acres of 

 grass land, and its conversion to 

 tillage. During the same period 

 Scotland and Ireland added fully 

 a million acres to their arable area. 

 This action was partly voluntary, 

 and partly the consequence of com- 

 pulsion exerted by the boards of 

 agriculture, working through local 

 executive committees established 

 for the duration of the war. 



In New Zealand the chief indi- 

 genous grass is tussock grass, which 

 affords excellent grazing for stock 

 on the higher and rougher ground. 

 It has a wonderful power of resist- 

 ing drought. So-called English 

 grasses and other pasture plants 

 have been extensively sown on 

 enclosed paddocks where dairying 

 and stock-fattening are practised. 

 Lucerne is now largely cultivated 

 in New Zealand. 



In South Africa comparatively 

 little has been done to lay down 

 pastures. Owing to the vast un- 

 occupied tracts of land, the cheap- 

 ness of the land, and the abund- 

 ance of nutritious fodder growing 

 in the veld, there was no necessity 

 to improve the natural pastures. 



In Canada and the U.S.A. the 

 virgin prairie supplies much of the 

 pasturage for stock, but in both 

 countries much attention is now 

 given to the creation of artificial 

 pastures by the sowing of cock's- 

 foot, timothy, fescues, peas, and I 

 clover. Lucerne (alfalfa) has at- 

 tained to a very high place in the 



