HOW TO GROW GOOD GRASSES. 53 



and shrubs or stunted trees where the surface is 

 much broken, and the animals they are made to 

 carry are few ; but on the more rounded and smooth 

 lines of the downs is a finer herbage, kept so not 

 only from the nature of the case, but from the fact 

 that such a position favours the more thickly stocking 

 it with that close-grazing animal the sheep. 



These pasturages, though very extensive, are yet 

 being encroached upon by a higher cultivation, and 

 the hayfields one occasionally meets with around the 

 squatter's cabin even in the wild mountainous parts 

 of Wales sufficiently testify to the greater produc- 

 tiveness of which the most unfavourable districts arc 

 capable. 



2. The village common is sometimes extensive ; it, 

 too, as the former, is only grazed. Many of them 

 have of late years been enclosed. Where much 

 depastured — and they usually carry as much stock 

 as they can bear — there is a remarkable absence of 

 plants other than grasses. Indeed, grass-herbage, and 

 usually of the best species, will prevail, unless in 

 places where there may be stagnant water, in which 

 cases a little drainage would produce a large public 

 benefit ; but as what is everybody's business is done 

 by no one, the common is too often left much wilder, 

 and thus made poorer than it need be. 



3. The river flats here meant are, for the most 

 part, large fields partaking of the nature of common ; 

 that is, certain farmers and others have the privilege 

 of grazing during the autumn; but it is aimed up 

 early in spring, for the purpose of taking a crop of 

 hay. Such lands would be impoverished by such 

 constant haymaking ; but the winter floods leave be- 

 hind them a deposit of silt and fluviatile materials, 



i? 2 



