150 REPORT OF THE SCOTTISH COMMISSION 



larity of the crop is not surprising. Another plant, as yet little 

 grown but undoubtedly about to become of great importance to 

 stock feeders, especially in the dry belt, is Alfalfa. This is said 

 to grow well in arid districts and to yield three cuttings in one 

 season. It is therefore suited for soiling. This, in a country where 

 dry pasture and summer flies are the curse of the dairyman, where 

 cows are sometimes sprayed every day to keep off flies, and where the 

 milk yield is often heavier in winter than in summer, should prove 

 a most valuable acquisition. 



Pastures 



As regards Canadian pastures it must be said that we found 

 them nearly everywhere disappointing. We saw them at the end 

 of an exceptionally dry summer, but after all allowance has been 

 made, this is the impression that still remains. To what extent the 

 poorness of the pastures is inevitable and to what extent it is the 

 outcome of farming practice, it was of course impossible for us to 

 determine. The hard frost, far more severe and prolonged than 

 anything we ever experience, must have an injur ous effect. The 

 comparatively short and hot summer cannot be helpful. Yet such 

 influences do not seem to account for everything. What about the 

 methods of farming ? Are the fields, for instance, laid down to 

 pasture in that high manurial condition which we consider as the 

 first essential ? On the contrary it seems rather the rule to sow 

 a field only when the land needs a rest from the exhausting strain 

 of grain-growing. Are the grass seed mixtures carefully arranged 

 so as to be well adapted to the land on which they are to be sown ? 

 Almost the only mixture sown is made up entirely of timothy and 

 red clover, and as we were assured on the highest authority, 97 

 per cent, of the whole grass-seed sown in Canada consists of timothy. 

 The whole subject of top and bottom grasses, of deep roots and 

 shallow roots, has yet to be discussed in Canada. Are the pastures 

 that exist skilfully handled with a view to their improvement ? 

 Are they, for example, top dressed or manured ? Are feeding 

 stuffs consumed on them ? On the contrary crops of hay are cut 

 from them repeatedly and pasture seems to be reckoned a matter of 

 altogether third-rate importance. Possibly it is really so in the 

 Dominion, but to us who have learnt the value of good pasture and 

 the difficulty of making it, and who have had some experience of 

 how greatly good pastures improve the physical texture as well as 

 the manurial condition of land, this is a new doctrine and hard to 

 understand. 



Farm Buildings 



The Canadian barn practically constitutes the farm steading. 

 It is a big building with four high walls and is nearly always entirely 

 made of wood. Instead of slates or tiles, wooden shingles or cor- 

 rugated iron cover the roof. It stands three storeys high. The 



