9ie PRACTICE OF AGRICULTURE. Part III. 



5851. The lands considered as best adapted for perinanent pasture axe of three kinds : 

 strong tenacious clays, unfit for turnips or barley, which are said to improve the more 

 the longer they are kept under a judicious system in grass ; soft clayey loams, with a 

 clayey or marly bottom or substratum ; and rich, sound, deep-soiled land, or vale land, 

 enriched by nature at the expense of the higher grounds, generally lying in a situation 

 favourable with respect to climate. 



5852. The advantages of such pastures are represented in the strongest light. It is affirmed, that they 

 feed cattle to a greater weight ; that they are not so easily scorched by the summer's drought; that the 

 grasses are more nutritive, both for sheep and cattle ; that milch cows fed upon them give richer milk, 

 and more butter and cheese ; that the hoofs of all animals pastured on them are much better preserved ; 

 that they produce a greater variety of grasses ; that, when properly laid down, they yield a succession of 

 pasture throughout the wliole season ; that the herbage is sweeter, and more easily digested ; and that 

 they return an immense produce at a trifling expense. 



58.53. To Itreak up lands possessing these advantages, it is said, can only be justified by the most urgent 

 public necessity, and to prevent the horrors of famine. The real value of such lands will appear by con- 

 sidering their rent and produce. The grass lands in Lincolnshire are accounted the richest in the kingdom. 

 The rents are various; from 1/. I5s. to St. per acre ; and the value of the produce from 31. per acre to 10/. 

 This produce arises from beef, mutton, and wool ; and is obtained subject to little variation from the 

 nature of the seasons, and at a trifling expense. The stock maintained per acre on the best grazing lands 

 surpasses what could be fed by any arable produce. It is not at all uncommon to feed at the rate of from 

 six to seven sheep in summer, and about two sheep in winter. The sheep, when put on the grass, may 

 weigh from 18 lbs. to 20 lbs. per quarter, and the increase of weight would be at the rate of 4 lbs. per 

 quarter, or 16 lbs. per sheep. But suppose in all only 100 lbs. at 8rf. per pound, that would amount to 3/. 

 17* lOrf. The wool would be worth about two guineas more, besides the value of the winter keep ; and 

 the total may be stated at about 71. per acre, got at little expense. Such lands, it is evident, cannot be 

 better employed than in feeding stock. 



5854. Grass land on tenacious clays and heavy loams, when brought in a succession of 

 years, or perhaps of ages, into a state of great productiveness, cannot be ploughed without 

 the risk of great injury, and are more profitable in the production of herbage than they 

 could be in the production of grain. 



5855. Grass on deep-soiled sound vale lands would be productive of corn if ploughed ; 

 but would be probably injured by cultivation : from their texture being altered, and 

 rendered unduly loose and open by tillage ; from the native plants being more or less 

 destroyed or enfeebled ; and from the great decomposition and waste of the principles of 

 fertility resident in the soil. 



5856. The extent of these descriptions of land, however, is not so great that the advan- 

 tages of breaking them up could probal)ly ever be a national object, or worth the risk of 

 injuring their future productiveness in grass. But there are pasture lands of an inferior 

 sort, which are too apt to be confounded with those already described; and respectmg the 

 propriety of occasionally appropriating them to arable culture, there can hardly be a 

 doubt. Such lands do not depend upon their intrinsic fertility, but uppn annual supplies 

 of manure derived from the arable land in their neighbourhood. 



SuBSECT. 2. Advantages and Disadvantages of breaking up Grass Lands. 



5857. The advantages of breaking up grass lands, not of the richest quality, will appear 

 by a comparison of their produce with that of arable lands. 



5858. From the enquiry of the Board of Agriculture, it appears that an acre of clover, tares, rape, potatoes, 

 turnips, cole, or cabbages, will furnish at least thrice as much food as the same acre would have done, had 

 it remained in pasture of a medium quality ; and, consequently, that the same extent of land would main- 

 tain at least as much stock as when in grass, besides producing every other year a valuable crop of corn ; 

 and this, independently of the value of the straw, which, whether consumed as litter, or as food for cattle, 

 will add considerably to the stock of manure. It follows that, with the exception of rich pastures, arable 

 land is, on an average, superior to grass land, with respect to furnishing articles of human food, in the 

 proportion of three to one; and consequently every piece of land unnecessarily kept in grass, the produce 

 of which will only maintain one person, is depriving the community of food capable of maintaining two 

 additional members. 



5859. The principal objection to the conversion of old turf into arable land arises from an alleged infe- 

 riority, both in bulk and nutritive properties, in the new when compared to the old herbage. It is 

 certain, that by no art can we at once produce a surface of grasses which can be at all compared to some 

 of the richest pastures in Buckinghamshire, Lincolnshire, and Leicestershire ; but these are not the pas- 

 tures which any prudent agriculturist would recommend to be broken up, whatever might be the price of 

 corn ; and more especially in Britain, and with a prospect of the trade in corn being at no distant period 

 free. Still, in by far the greater number of cases where the soil will admit of the convertible husbandry, 

 and where that husbandry is as well understood and piactised as it is in the north of England and south 

 of Scotland, we should have no hesitation in leaving it to the farmer to break up whatever pastures he 

 thought he could do with profit during a fourteen or twenty-one years' lease. A gentleman who had a 

 large farm, principally consisting of strong rich clay (every field of which, with hardly any exception, he 

 occasionally broke up), was accustomed to lay them down with a crop of barley, and to sow fourteen 

 pounds of white clover, a peck of rib-grass, and three quarters of hay seeds, per acre. By this liberal 

 allowance of seed, he always secured a thick coat of herbage the first year, which differed from old pasture 

 in being more luxuriant. Such lands, therefore, under judicious management, will rarely be injured by 

 the plough. When laid down from tillage into grass, they may not carry for the first year or two such 

 heavy cattle as they would afterwards ; but they will support more in number, though of a smaller size, 

 and bring a greater weight of butcher meat to market. It is often desirable to keep one or two moderate- 

 sized enclosures, of from ten to twenty acres, according to the size of the farm, in perennial pasture, for 

 the feeding of cattle and sheep, and as a resource for the stock to go to in case of a severe spring or summer 

 drought ; but the retaining of any considerable portion of a farm in old turf, or permanent pasture, unless 

 of the richest quality, is in general injurious to the landlord, the tenant, and the public. The value of 

 any estate, where the system of permanent pasture has been carried to an unreasonable extent, maybe 

 easily and greatly augmented by appropriating the radnure of the farm to turnips and other green crops, 

 and by the adoption of the convertible system of husbandry." 



