234 RURAL ECONOMY OF ENGLAND. 



perfection of the art has been to imitate in other quarters 

 what in the west has been so bountifully bestowed. 



Nowadays, the grass country in its turn begins to lag 

 behind ; the very fact of its prolonged and easy success 

 has sent it to sleep, while all around progresses. Agri- 

 culturists of the present day are not very favourable to 

 what is called old grass ; human art can do little for it, 

 and where there is any great extent of it, agricultural 

 science, so called, has made little advance. The grass- 

 land farmers of the present day do just as their fathers 

 did before them ; the spur of necessity has not touched 

 them, and modern improvements make their way among 

 them with difficulty. The skilful stabulation of the 

 Huxtables and Mechis, the art of drainage, the assi- 

 duous search after new manures, the ingenious invention 

 of implements, the selection of seeds, all that feverish 

 activity which characterises the new school, is to them 

 unknown. The school of Arthur Young himself has not 

 produced any thorough modification of their system. 

 The two revolutions, which at the interval of half a 

 century have agitated the agricultural world, have passed 

 over almost without touching them. They rest upon 

 their old superiority, obtained and preserved hitherto 

 without exertion. 



But will it be always so ? This may reasonably be 

 doubted ; for not only does the improved system of agri- 

 culture produce, in general, a larger gross return, but in 

 some parts it gives a greater net result. In the mean 

 time, rents of grass-land are still, upon the whole, the 

 highest. In the United Kingdom there are many 

 millions of acres probably one-fourth of the whole 

 surface in old grass. Nowhere else is found a like 

 extent of lands giving such a revenue. In certain privi- 

 leged parts of the north and south of France, in some 



