418 THE MIDLAND MILK BELT 



profit of the milk business. He was then free, but 

 only after exercising the greatest care in buying his 

 bulls, in reserving them exclusively for his own herd, 

 and in never bringing in bought cows until he had 

 kept them under observation for one calving on 

 another small farm he worked. He had also dressed 

 all his pastures with gas lime, but was not prepared 

 to conclude whether that had caused the cessation 

 of the disease or had only coincided with it. On 

 this farm we saw some very fine grassland, full of 

 clover, though much of it had only tumbled down 

 from poor arable fields during the depression and had 

 been brought to its present condition by careful 

 management and the use of basic slag, to which the 

 heavy soil responded admirably. Our host held, 

 however, that all the grassland thereabouts would be 

 the better for an occasional ploughing and resowing, 

 if only to get rid of the patches of " hassock " Aira 

 ccespitosa which establish themselves and gradually 

 extend where the drainage is imperfect. 



He declared that under much of the land in the 

 district the drainage was faulty ; often the drains had 

 been set 4 ft. deep at wide intervals, under one of 

 the mistaken theories advocated in the early days 

 of tile drainage, when it was not clearly realized that 

 drains ought to be set deep or shallow, according 

 to whether the water rises from below or is only the 

 rain soaking down. On the heavy clays of the 

 Midlands the function of the drains is to get the rain 

 away from the land, so they should not be set more 

 than 30 in. deep. Landlords were nowadays, our 

 host declared, indisposed to spend money on draining ; 

 he had, however, mole-drained one of his own fields 

 with excellent results under an agreement with his 

 landlord to share the expense. Much of the grass- 



