212 THE PRINCIPLES OF 



the first "to break a pasture will make a man." Now 

 what does this piece of wisdom point to ? It points to the 

 fact that a pasture is a complete store of wealth. The 

 amount of nitrogenous matter and available plant food in a 

 pasture is extraordinary. That is the reason that to break 

 a pasture will make a man, and so it will if he has sufficient 

 of it. An old pasture is in the position of the virgin soils of 

 the new world, and if a man has a sufficiency of it, it will 

 make him wealthy. But it requires time to accumulate 

 wealth both with people and with soils. It takes a long 

 time, sometimes too long, and during the whole of that period 

 which gradually brings the soil into that particularly rich 

 state which belongs to permanent pasture, we must consider 

 that money is being laid out, that is to say, it is done at a 

 sacrifice. The man who lays down a large amount of pasture 

 must be content to postpone his profits for many years, and 

 perhaps it may even be said to impoverish the father and 

 enrich the son. Lime is said to enrich the father and 

 impoverish the son. The laying down of permanent pasture 

 would have an opposite tendency ; the father may have to 

 do it at considerable expense and never see the advantage of 

 it ; but the son, coming into the occupation of his old pasture 

 land, will at length reap the benefit. 



There are agricultural teachers who scoff at such ideas, and 

 say they can produce a better pasture in a very short time than 

 the old pasture. The real fact is, that in laying down land to 

 grass we get a full maximum the first year, and we get i 

 very good crop the second year, and then I am afraid in very 

 many cases the pasture begins to go back for, it may be, 

 several seasons. That is the general history of laying down 

 a pasture. There can be no doubt about it there may be 

 exceptions to the rule but in the vast majority of cases your 

 pasture will begin to go back ; then, after a period, it begins 

 to recover itself, and when it has been some twelve or fifteen 



