ANCIENT MEADOWS 241 



matter how threatening the weather, and no crop lies 

 so completely at the mercy of the skies as does the hay. 

 If the crop be short, it cannot therefore be left to 

 grow. The grass must fall while the blossom is upon 

 it, or the cattle will refuse it. " Better let it spoil on 

 the ground than spoil as it grows," is a country maxim. 

 For the latter is a certain loss, and a day's bright sun 

 and wind may always dry a fallen crop. 



How and when men first learned to make hay will 

 probably never be known. For hay-making is a 

 process, and the product is not merely sun-dried grass, 

 but grass which has partly fermented, and is as much 

 the work of men's hands as flour or cider. Probably 

 its discovery was due to accident, unless men learnt it 

 from the pikas or calling hares of the Eastern steppes, 

 which cut and stack hay for the winter. That idea 

 would fit in nicely with the theory that Central Asia 

 was the home of the " Aryan " race, if we were allowed 

 to believe it, and hay-making is certainly an art 

 mainly practised in cold countries for winter forage. 



But the old meadows only supply a part, though 

 probably the most valuable part, of the yearly crop of 

 hay. The change from arable to pasture, which has 

 marked the last twenty years of English farming, has 

 covered what were once cornfields with sown grasses 

 or " leys." No one travelling by rail over any of the 

 high plateaux of the south of England, such as the 

 Berkshire downs or Salisbury Plain, can fail to notice 

 the hundreds of acres of waving " rye-grass," which has 



taken the place of fallows and turnip-fields. On the 



R 



