

MANAGEMENT OF GRASS LANDS. 261 



II. SOILING. 



No question is now entertained as to the great utility and 

 consequent advantages arising from the soiling of cattle, when 

 reduced to a correct system and conducted on judicious princi- 

 ples. One reason why the practice of soiling is not more 

 generally adopted in this country at the present time, may be 

 owing in a great measure to the warm recommendations of its 

 friends some thirty years since, who urged it upon farmers in 

 all parts of the country, before sufficient experiments had been 

 carefully made to determine the best methods, and the kinds 

 of grasses most suitable to the object. In consequence, the 

 well-meant efforts of its advocates and friends were frustrated, 

 for a season, and the system abandoned by most, if not all, of 

 those who had entered upon it. 



But its failure at that early day, must not be attributed 

 wholly to the cause assigned above. There were other and 

 powerful counteracting influences. The great mass of the 

 community opposed, and that most strenuously, the introduc- 

 tion of improvements, however important and beneficial, as 

 innovations on the old established system (such as it was) of 

 farming; and their prejudices, according to LORAIN, were too 

 deeply rooted in favour of perpetual meadows or grass grounds, 

 so much so as to prevent impartial reasoning on this or any 

 other subject. 



Whether, in any case, a field of young grass shall be applied 

 to herbage or forage, is dependent wholly on considerations of 

 expediency and profit. If there be stock upon a farm re- 

 quiring good and early grass, it may be most advantageous to 

 use the new grass for herbage in certain cases it may be more 

 advantageous to employ it in soiling in others, to convert it 

 into hay. In the practice of the farm a portion of it may be 

 advantageously applied to all these purposes. 



When the grasses, clovers, or other forage plants are to be 

 used for soiling, they are to be cut with a scythe, and carried 

 directly to the place of feeding, and placed carefully in a crib 

 or rack the animals being at the same time well littered with 

 straw. The latter is not only an important, but an indispen- 

 sable requisite to the success of the system. 



The system of soiling was derived originally from the 

 Netherlands. It is a very old, though by no means a universal 

 practice. We find it mentioned so long back as the year 1650, 

 in a Treatise on Agriculture, entitled "Hartlib's Legacy," 

 p. 245, and in all thickly settled parts of the continent it is 

 now coming into extensive practice. As a country becomes 



