CHAPTER XXXVIII. 



THE ELEMENTS' INFLUENCE ON PASTURE 

 GROWTH. 



The sun. or light, and rain and air, are the three 

 essential agents in the growth of plant life. To be well- 

 grown and healthy grasses require a balanced propor- 

 tion of all these. Without the light or sun there would 

 be no chemical transposition within the plants to saccha- 

 rine and starch, and these provide the nutrient and fat- 

 tening properties for the grazing stock. Without rain 

 the plants' food supply in mineral and decomposed vege- 

 table or manure matter in the soil would not go into 

 solution to be absorbed by the hungering plant. With- 

 out air, the process of respiration, and a plant is as 

 living a thing as an animal of absorbing and throwing- 

 off carbonic acid gas and carbon by the respective func- 

 tions of the plants would not be possible. Without all 

 these things grass, indeed, would be a dead thing, 

 would not have existed. 



There are such things, we can readily understand, 

 as a good or a bad supply of light, a good or a bad 

 supply of rain, a good or a bad supply of air. A good 

 supply of all of them, with the soil of the proper kind, is 

 what gives us valuable agricultural and pastoral lands, 

 and with all of them inferior we get land of low value. 

 But it is possible for most of these great natural require- 

 ments to be good and but one of them deficient. This 

 is eminently illustrated in the case of a country or 

 locality with a deficient rainfall. Then again there 

 may be too much rainfall, and the growth becomes not 

 properly suitable for sheep to thrive on ; the roots of the 

 grasses have to put up with aquatic conditions and de- 



