THE MANAGEMENT OF OLD GRASS LAND. 99 



the tide is turned, and benefit is conferred on the pasture in 

 addition to the advantage whicli the animals derive from it. The 

 improvement will, of course, be gradual, and its progress be 

 regulated by the quantity and the quality of the additional food 

 supplied. In this extra feeding of grazing animals there is a 

 simple and economical means of enricliing a poor pasture, and 

 the increased weight of the stock is an immediate if only a partial 

 return of tlie outlay. The economical side of this practice de- 

 serves a further word. The moving and carting of heavy bulks of 

 manure is avoided, and the land at once has the benefit of the 

 droppings. Wlien manure is stacked in heaps, or is allowed 

 to lie in the farm-yard, some of its most fertilising constituents 

 drain away or are dissipated in the atmosphere. It will now be 

 evident that the con]mon practice of grazing a pasture by day 

 and folding on the arable at night is a very ingenious device for 

 ruining grass land. Even when the slieep are helped with cake 

 it is no sufficient compensation for their absence during twelve 

 out of the twenty-four hours. 



A further means of deteriorating grass land is the practice 

 of allowing pastures reserved especially for horned cattle to be 

 over-stocked. When an ox-pasture is eaten down so bare as to 

 allow the roots of the more succulent grasses to become scorched, 

 it is a serious injurj^ not only for that year's feed but for several 

 subsequent seasons. In one of the recent hot summers I lioped 

 by a liberal allowance of cake to make a pasture carry more 

 stock than the crop justified, and the result was disastrous to 

 the plant. On the other hand, a sheep pasture cannot well be 

 cropped too close to maintain constant growth of the sweet fine 

 herbage of which it should consist. 



There is widespread indiflerence as to the predominance of 

 such weeds as cowslips, primroses, orchids, daisies, and plantains, 

 although these plants frequently show that the soil is in such a 

 condition as to be incapable of maintaining nourishing herbage. 

 The mere presence of these weeds and of Barley and Bronie 

 Grasses is an evil in itself, and they indicate that tlie land is 



H 2 



