AGRICULTURE. 155 



by nature under her varying influences, and the present 

 general practice. It is an absolute necessity, therefore, 

 to grow auxihary food, and to dispose of and use the 

 pasture lands under a system which will admit of their 

 yielding more abundantly and more continuously, as also 

 preserve the better class of grasses thereon. The ways 

 and means of effecting this is the problem which presents 

 itself for solution to every landowner and stockowner, 

 who desires to keep pace with the times and the material 

 progression which is everywhere in operation. 



It must be a bold pen, indeed, that would presume to 

 lay down a definite law for universal practice in the very 

 dawn of a new phase in the heavings of progression in a 

 great national industry ; but in an humble and pious spirit 

 it may be permitted us to endeavour to throw some light 

 on so important a subject, one which is to work out the 

 wellbeing and ' life ' of the land we live in. 



There is an infinite variety of individual circumstances, 

 of conditions and situations of land, a considerable range 

 of climate and climatic influences, great differences of 

 vegetation, &c. to complicate the subject. 



Let us take into consideration, in the first place, our 

 natural pastures. We find them teeming with luxuriant 

 vegetation and bare and arid by turns. We find alternate 

 tracts of wet and cold, rich and dry lands. Each in its 

 turn serves a purpose or entails a prejudice, supplies more 

 or less food according to the season, and the weather 

 during the different seasons of the year, and producing 

 different classes of herbage — poor and scant, strong and 

 coarse, sedgy and of little nourislnnent, rich, succulent, 

 and luxuriant, or fine, tender, and nutritious. 



The higher, warmer, and richer lands yielding, with an 

 average fall of rain, abundance of palatable grasses and 

 clover during the autumn, winter, and spring, but many 



