122 PERMANENT AND TEMPOEARY PASTURES. 



crop. The custom of maintaining agricultural holdings that are 

 almost entirely arable or almost entirely pastoral, has failed to 

 meet the necessities of our time. What is wanted now is a 

 combination of arable and pastoral husbandry, so that when corn 

 does not pay and stock is profitable, or vice versd, each occupier 

 may obtain benefit from one branch of his business. The grazier 

 would be profited in being able to winter his own stock instead 

 of selling; it to make a winter's manure for the arable farmer. On 

 the other hand, tlie arable farmer would not then, as now, be 

 compelled to sell his stock immediately his roots were exhausted, 

 or i)ay the grazier to summer the animals for him. When neither 

 arable nor pastoral land yields a profit, the system I am advocat- 

 ing has the merit of reducing expenses to a minimum. 



The specialising of agriculture has been carried to injuri- 

 ous excess. Great arable farms, without enough pasture to keep 

 half-a-dozen cows, and large grazing farms that are wanting in 

 sufficient arable to grow straw and roots for winter consumption, 

 should both be regarded as evils, demanding prompt rectification. 

 The admirable system, pursued in Lancashire and in Scotland, of 

 annually laying away in artificial grasses a proportion of each 

 farm for a period of three or four years, is so successful that 

 it is surprising the practice has not long since been adopted all 

 over the country. Instead of this, the sowing of Broad Clover 

 alone is still the rule, and the admixture even of Eye Grass the 

 excej)tion. In comparatively few instances is it usual to sow with 

 the clovers such heavy cropping varieties as Eye Grass, Foxtail, 

 and Timothy, without which the best results cannot be obtained 

 from the alternate system. 



The admission of corn into this country without duty, with 

 the present high rate of labour, renders it impossible to grow 

 wheat at a profit on land heavily burdened with rates, taxes, and 

 other charges. Were the price of wheat to rise to a figure that 

 would make it a profitable crop to grow, we could ahnost, if 

 not entirely, supply ourselves from Enghsh soil ; but while the 

 doctrines of Free Trade prevail the farmer must turn his atten- 



