843 PRACTICE OF AGRICULTURE. , Part III. 



quantity of stock, and to better purpose, than when in an open and exposed state. 

 Not to overstock upland pastures ; for when this is done, the cattle are not only 

 starved, and the quantity of herbage diminished, but the soil is impoverished. When 

 the pasture ground is enclosed and subdivided, so as to admit of it, the stock ought 

 to be shifted from one enclosure to another, at proper intervals ; giving the first of 

 the grass to the fattening, in preference to the rearing stock. This practice tends 

 to increase the quantity of grass, which has thus time to get up ; and the ground 

 being fresh and untainted, when the stock returns to it, more especially if rain has 

 fallen, they will feed with greater appetite and relish. The dung dropt by the stock, 

 while feeding, should be spread about, instead of its being sutfered to remain, in a 

 solid body, on the place where it was dropt. "Where the large and the smaller kinds of 

 stock are to be fed on the same pastures, the larger species should have the first bite ; 

 and it is not thought by some advisable to pasture land with a mixed collection 

 of different species of live stock, unless the field be extensive, or unless the herbage 

 varies in different parts of the field. It is generally found, that the grass produced by 

 the dung of cattle or horses, is injurious to sheep, producing grass of too rich a quality 

 for that species of stock. There is no mode by which such pastures are more effectually 

 improved, than by the application of lime, either spread upon the surface, or mixed with 

 the soil. In the latter case, it is essential, that the lime should be mixed with the sur- 

 face soil only ; as lime is apt to sink, if covered deep by the plough. The coarse grasses 

 would, in that case, regain possession of the soil, and the dung afterwards deposited by 

 the cattle, will not enrich the land in the same manner as if the lime had been incor- 

 porated with the surface only. (Code.) 



5259. Mountainous pastures, from which the plough is altogether excluded, have been 

 commonly classed among waste lands ; even such of them as bear herbage by no means 

 of inconsiderable value ; as well as heaths and moors, with patches of which the green 

 pastures are often checquered. The general term wastes, is therefore a very indefinite ex- 

 pression ; and, indeed, is not unfrequently made to comprehend all that extensive division 

 of our territory that neither produces corn nor rich herbage. Yet it is on such tracts 

 that by far the greater part of our butcher's meat and wool is grown, and not a little of 

 the former fully prepared for the market. Foreigners and superficial readers at home 

 must accordingly be greatly mistaken, if they imagine that what are called wastes, by the 

 Board of Agriculture, and other writers on rural economy, are really altogether un- 

 productive ; and it would still be a grosser error to believe, that all those wastes owe 

 their continuance to neglect or mismanagement ; and that any exertions of human in- 

 dustry can ever render the greater part of them, including all the mountainous tract of 

 Great Britain, more valuable than they are at present, without a much greater expendi- 

 ture of capital, than, under almost any circumstances, they could possibly return. (Suj). 

 art. ^gr.) 



5260. The chief improvements of which mountainous pastures are susceptible, are those 

 of draining and sheltering by plantations. Some parts might probably be enclosed by 

 strips of plantation between stone walls, or by stone walls alone; but as the stock on 

 mountain pastures are generally under the care of a herdsman, the advantages of change 

 of pasture and alternate eating down and saving or sparing the grass, by keeping out the 

 cattle, are obtainable without the use of fields. 



Sect. III. 0/the Improvement of Grass Lands, hy a temporary Conversion to Tillage. 



5261 . Thepractice of breaking up grass lands, either with a view to their being soon after 

 restored to that state, or to their permanent retention in aration, has occasioned much dis- 

 cussion, and even attracted the attention of the Legislature, and the Board of Agriculture. 

 In The Code of Agriculture, it is stated, that a " much larger proportion of the united 

 kingdom, than is at present so cultivated, might be subject to the alternate system of 

 husbandry, of transferred from grass to tillage, and then restored to grass. Much of 

 the middling sorts of grass lands, from 200 to 400 feet above the level of the sea, is of 

 this description; and all well-informed husbandmen, and friends to the general pros- 

 perity of the country, regret, that such lands are left in a state of unproductive pasturage, 

 and excluded from tillage. 



5262. A very extensive inquiry was made, in consequence of a requisition from the House of Lords to 

 the Board of Agriculture, in December 1800, " into the best means of converting certain portions of 

 grass lands into tillage, without exhausting the soil, and of returning the same to grass, after a certain 

 period, in an improved state, or at least without injury ;" and the information collected by the Board, upon 

 that subject, is in the highest degree satisfactory and important' 



5263. On this subject the opinion of one of our first writers is, " that though it be im- 

 possible to deny that much grass land in England would be more productive, both to 

 the proprietor and occupier, under a good course of cropping, than under pasture ; yet 

 it is no less certain, that there are large tracts of rich grazing land, which, in the pi-esent 

 state of the demand for the produce of grass lands, and of the law of England, with re- 

 gard to tithes, cannot be employed more profitably for the parties concerned, than in 

 pasture. The interest which the Board of Agriculture has takenin this question, with 



