164 BOAED OF AGRICULTURE. 



by pastures and meadows, and to a steady decline in the 

 annual yield of fodder upon large tracts of land but little 

 suited for an economical production of fjrasses ; in the ma- 

 jority of instances, to the influence of both circumstances. 



This statement applies with particular force to those times 

 and systems of farm industry where pastures and meadows 

 were still considered the almost exclusively reliable re- 

 sources of fodder for the support of horses, cattle and 

 sheep. A serious falling-off in the yield of the grass crop 

 under the described circumstances necessitated a reduction 

 in the farm live-stock, which in turn caused a decrease in 

 the production of manure. Adding to this result the cur- 

 rent practice of using the manure obtained from the feed- 

 ing of the crops secured from the grass lands for the 

 improvement of the ploughed lands, with scarcely any ma- 

 terial assistance from outside sources of manurial substances, 

 it is but natural that the productiveness of the former be- 

 came in the course of time seriously impaired. A scanty 

 supply of suitable manurial matter for the production of the 

 crops raised is to-day universally considered the most fatal 

 circumstance in any system of farming for profit. The 

 recognition of this fact belongs to our time. Three circum- 

 stances in particular may be charged with having delayed 

 the recognition of what is deservedly the true cause of 

 a gradual decline of remunerative farming in preceding 

 periods : first, the existence of large areas of cheap grass 

 lands; second, the exceptional recuperative quality of good 

 grass lands, i. e., their superior fitness for securing a liberal 

 share of plant food from the air and the soil by the aid of 

 natural agencies ; and third, the almost entire absence of 

 efficient means to obtain an intelligent insight into the 

 relations of the air, the water, and the soil to plant growth, 

 as well as into the mutual dependency of a remunerative 

 production of plants and of animals in a mixed farm man- 

 agement of the present day. 



The grass farm management in its more primitive form, 

 as described above, is to-day almost exclusively confined to 

 localities, which for some cause or other arc less advanced 

 in general improvements. It proves, to-daj'-, remunerative 

 only in cases where the lands are in an exceptional degree 



