CRAP. in. MANAGEMENT OF PASTURES. 807 



produce in highly concentrated forms, and without external aid the 

 process of exhaustion must of necessity go on. But when the herbage 

 consumed is supplemented with cake, corn, roots, hay, or other 

 extraneous food, the tide is turned, and benefit is conferred on the 

 pasture in addition to the advantage which the animals derive from it. 

 In this extra feeding of grazing animals there is a simple and 

 economical means of enriching a poor pasture, and the increased 

 weight of the stock affords an immediate and sometimes a complete 

 return of the outlay. The economical side of this practice deserves 

 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. When 

 manure is stacked in heaps, or is allowed to lie in the farm-yard, some 

 of its most valuable constituents drain away or are dissipated in the 

 atmosphere. The common practice of grazing a pasture by day 

 and folding on the arable land at night is a frequent means of 

 impoverishing grass land. Even when the sheep are helped with 

 cake it is no sufficient compensation for their absence during twelve 

 out of the twenty-four hours, especially the twelve hours of night. 



" 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 

 injury not only for that year's feed but for that of several subsequent 

 seasons. On the other hand, it has already been stated, that a sheep 

 pasture cannot easily be cropped too close to maintain constant growth 

 of the sweet fine herbage of which it should consist. 



" There is widespread indifference as to the predominance of such 

 weeds as cowslips, primroses, orchids, daisies, and plantains. The 

 presence of these weeds and of barley grasses and brome grasses is an 

 evil in itself, and they indicate that the land is starved, just as hair 

 grass, rushes, and sedges prove the need of drainage. Thistles, docks, 

 coltsfoot, and other large weeds may also abound, and they cannot be 

 eradicated without the constant use of the scythe and spud. In a foul 

 pasture the weeds are generally so mixed up with what good herbage 

 there may be, that they can only be improved out of existence as 

 better grasses are induced to take their places. A heavy dressing of 

 salt applied after weeds have been cut will kill a lot of them, and an 

 application of gas-lime 1 as been known to effect a surprising change in 

 the herbage of an inferior pasture. The folding of sheep thickly will 

 also produce marked benefit on poor upland grass if the animals are 

 at the same time fed with corn or cake. They should be penned or 

 folded on the ground long enough to clear the crop, and then many 

 weeds will be killed outright. This practice is very different in its 

 effects from that of giving sheep the run of the land. Whatever 

 discourages the growth of rough herbage encourages that which is 

 better. On the other hand, however good a pasture may be, it has 

 only to be persistently neglected, and in time it will revert to the waste 

 condition of a moorland. 



" A succession of wet summers is another fruitful source of injury to 



