MEADOW. 



MEADOW. 



for half a year, it will be fit for use. Such was 

 the receipt. 



In Wales, in ancient times, mead was held 

 in very high repute ; as appears from an ancient 

 law, which has been given by Dr. Bevan, that 

 "There are three things in court which must 

 be communicated to the king before they are 

 made known to any other person : 1st, every 

 sentence of the judge ; 2d, every new song ; 

 3d, every cask of mead." The mead-maker 

 was the eleventh person in dignity at court, and 

 took precedence of the physician. Besides the 

 preparation of mead, our forefathers were ac- 

 customed to flavour their usual grape wines 

 with honey and other ingredients. There were 

 two kinds of spiced wines in use in England 

 in the thirteenth century, called Hippocras and 

 Clary. The first consisted either of white or 

 red wine, and the latter of claret, both mingled 

 with honey and spices. Dr. Henderson, in his 

 History of Wineg, speaks of a receipt still exist- 

 ing, which gives directions how " to make 

 ypocrasse for lords with gynger, synamon, and 

 graynes, sugour, and turesoll ; and for corayn 

 pepull, gynger, canell, longe peper, and cla- 

 ryffyed honey." Mead formed the nectar of 

 the Scandinavian nations, and was celebrated 

 by their bards : it was the drink which they 

 expected to quaff in heaven out of the skulls 

 of their enemies; and was, as might be expect- 

 ed, liberally patronized on earth. The Scandi- 

 navian mead is flavoured with primrose blos- 

 soms. (Penny Magazine.) 



MEADOW. A field under grass cultiva- 

 tion, generally situated on the banks of a river 

 or lake ; but so far above the surface of the 

 water as to be considerably drier than marsh 

 land, and, consequently, producing grass and 

 herbage of a superior quality. The soil of 

 meadow lands is generally alluvial, and more 

 or less mixed with sand ; and it is kept in a 

 state of fertility by the depositions made on its 

 surface, in consequence of being occasionally 

 overflowed by the adjoining waters. The pro- 

 duce of meadows is generally made into hay, 

 which, though not equal in quality to that pro- 

 duced on drier grass lands, is yet superior to 

 what is obtained from marshes. See GRASS, 

 HAY, IRRIGATION, and MAIISH. 



In England some meadows of great extent, 

 belonging to a community or district in which 

 every inhabitant has a right to send his cattle 

 to graze under certain regulations, are never 

 mown. When the number of those who have 

 a right of common pasture is not very great, 

 they frequently agree among themselves to 

 abstain from depasturing the meadows in 

 spring, and, dividing them into portions, each 

 makes hay of his share ; after which the cattle 

 are admitted in common for the remainder of 

 the season. Thus a common meadow is con- 

 verted into a Lammas meadow, that is, a meadow 

 which becomes a common meadow after the 1st 

 of August, this being the time when it is supposed 

 that all the hay has been made and secured. 



Low alluvial land, or that which can be 

 irrigated at pleasure, is usually left for the 

 scythe, either from its productiveness from 

 the rich deposits which are periodically laid 

 upon it, or from its being too wet for cattle to 

 graze on it in winter without poaching the 



surface. In a proper rotation system, upland 

 is also occasionally devoted to the production 

 of grass for the scythe. In upland situations 

 meadows are either alternately mown and 

 pastured, or broken up for oats or wheat, 

 after they have yielded a crop of hay, and been 

 grazed during the preceding year. The prac- 

 tice of leaving young leys in pasture one year 

 after the first mowing, and then ploughing them 

 up, is very general in England and Ireland. 

 Grass land kept constantly for meadow, ouglt 

 never to be depastured except in dry weather, 

 as the breaking of the surface by the feet of 

 the cattle, not only injures the grasses of the 

 sward, but, by causing the stagnation of the 

 water in holes, promotes the growth of rushes 

 and other coarse aquatic plants, besides killing 

 the finer grasses, and rendering the surface 

 uneven for the scythe. A dressing of sand, 

 even of the worst kind, and the use of calca- 

 reous manures, or salt, will be found excellent 

 for coarse, rushy meadows, by tending to ren- 

 der the texture of the grasses finer; but as the 

 rankness and inferiority of the herbage pro- 

 ceeds from a superabundance of water, drain- 

 ing will be found the most certain remedy, and 

 effectual means of improvement. The mea- 

 dows which are to be mown should be shut 

 up early in spring, and those which are soft 

 and wet should have nothing larger than a 

 sheep admitted into them from November till 

 after hay-making time the next year. 



Of late years the practice of soiling has 

 been extensively adopted. By this means all 

 the advantages of mowing for hay are obtain- 

 ed, besides an abundant supply of rich manure, 

 which can be applied to the land in a liquid and 

 diluted state, when its effect is powerful and 

 certain. So much more fodder is produced 

 from the land by the system of soiling, that 

 arable fields are converted into artificial and 

 temporary meadows, in which the different spe- 

 cies of grasses are sown, in order to be cut 

 green or made into hay ; and when, from the 

 nature of the soil, the herbage degenerates, the 

 field is ploughed up again, greatly improved 

 by this change of cultivation. 



When a natural meadow has been neglected, 

 and the grass is of an inferior quality, and 

 mixed with rank weeds and moss, it requires 

 much care to restore it to its original fertility. 

 In most cases (says a writer in the Penny Cy- 

 clopcedia), the shortest method and the best is to 

 plough it up, clean and manure it during a 

 course of tillage, without taking very exhaust- 

 ing crops from it, and then to lay it down 

 again, in a clean and enriched state, by sowing 

 the best sort of grass-seeds ; or, which is pre- 

 ferable, by inoculating or planting in it small 

 tufts of grass from some rich meadow, which 

 will soon increase, and produce a new and 

 improved sward. But when the soil is a very 

 stiff clay, with only a small depth of good mould 

 over it, there is some danger in breaking the 

 old sward, for it will take a long time and much 

 manure to reproduce a proper covering of 

 sward. In this case it is a preferable practice 

 to scarify the meadow, by means of instruments 

 which do not go deep, but only tear up the sur- 

 face. If this is done in early spring, when the 

 ground is moist, and the whole surface is 

 3x2 797 



