50 AGRICULTURAL DEPRESSION 



twitch, and manuring, have only resulted in final mastery 

 by the weeds. Parts of the derelict heavy clays are 

 rapidly lapsing into scrub and bushes, and waste.^ 



Some clays, though stiff and costly to work, have a 

 natural tendency to grass, and do better. Thus in a bad 

 district in Hunts very heavy clay land, which had gone 

 to grass of itself, is now letting at ;i^i an acre, after lying 

 twelve to fourteen years. 



The lengthening of rotation by keeping grasses down 

 two, three, or four years is at once the cheapest and 

 most effective expedient everywhere, but especially 

 on heavy and mixed land, where the latter is not still 

 profitable on old lines.^ But lack of experience, and still 

 more lack of capital for additional stock, and other 

 incidents of a change of cultivation, are grave obstacles 

 to the extension of this system. 



The practical results of the temporary pasture system 

 are well given by Mr Ferguson, a Perthshire farmer. 

 The saving in labour and manure on a 300 acre farm 

 would be about ^200, and the land would produce more 

 when ploughed up the third year. There is a great 

 increase in fertility. It is a remarkable and not very 

 satisfactory feature of the past few years, that while 

 permanent pasture increased between 1885 and 1895 by 

 1,268,085 acres, temporary grass land, clover, sainfoin 

 and rotation grasses increased only by 75,ocxd acres. 



The suggestion frequently recurring of experi- 

 mental farms belongs properly to the topic of agri- 

 cultural education. Its value is more apparent as a 

 permanent part of the equipment of British agri- 

 culture than as an immediate help to agriculturists. 



More attention should be given to the removal of 

 restrictions and discouragements to the effective con- 

 version of arable into pasture land. It is plain from 

 much of the evidence that, if there had been a more i 

 general freedom to cultivate in w^hatever way, a profit 

 was obtainable, and if the laying down of permanent 

 and temporary pastures had been made matter for full 



' Pringle, Essex, p. 2. 



*Nunneley, 55,035. Pringle, Beds, Hants, Northants, p. 43. 



