38 ON SEEDING DOWN. 



grass. It will help to fill up the intersticeSj and when 

 it has flourished two years, it dies and leaves a tap-root 

 in the soil to rot, and afford nourishment to the roots of 

 the more saleable grasses. 



When you have finished one acre, you may take up 

 another ; and you cannot, at that season, be better em- 

 ployed. We don't allow of mowing bushes : let them 

 grow to be fire-wood, or let the plough run in your 

 pastures, and root them up ; so you can have nothing 

 better to do about the first of September than plough 

 and sow down. At that season, too, your team is 

 strong : it costs little to keep it, for it is fed in the very 

 field you are ploughing, and is always on the ground, 

 ready for work. 



You have now turned in about ten or twelve tons of 

 rowen to the acre to be rotted. If you doubt this, 

 weigh the grass, root and branch, of one square foot, 

 and multiply that by the number of feet in the acre. 

 This rowen will keep your ground light one year 

 longer than you can keep pulverized earth light ; and, 

 when you find the rushes and the sour grasses coming 

 in again, as they will in low, moist land, go through 

 the process again ; and the oftener you repeat this, the 

 richer will be your land, if you forbear to take off a 

 crop of grain. 



Grass does not impoverish land. Do you doubt this ? 

 After you have mown a field seven years, you will 

 raise as good a crop of corn, or of potatoes, as if it had 

 been mown only three years. It does not produce as 

 much grass, because the ground has become full of 

 roots, and, as we say, bound out ; so that the oftener 

 you turn in a crop of this rowen, the richer your land. 

 After a few repetitions, you will need to apply no 

 manure. The former mass, turned under, will, in its 

 turn, become a top dressing, and you can then renovate 

 your grass-lands at much less expense. . We have been 

 trying this process for some years, or we should not 

 recommend it to you with so much confidence. We 



