v] IMPROVEMENT OF PASTURE 63 



Where the herbage is not satisfactory it should, if possible, be 

 improved. If there are many rushes about some attempt should 

 be made to drain off the excess of water by improving the water- 

 courses, by mole draining, or other methods. Big tufts of coarse 

 herbage must be removed by cattle, young colts, or the scythe. 

 But it is no use trying to improve matters by adding dung or 

 feeding cake, this indeed may only make things worse. 



Usually poor pasture land is deficient in two constituents: 

 phosphates and lime ; and, until these are added, nothing else will 

 effect any improvement. Some hill pastures lack potash as well, 

 but these are not usually very valuable. The need for lime is 

 particularly marked on heavy soils and in wet regions, and it is 

 aggravated by the circumstances that the soil is perpetually 

 receiving the animals' excretions, and also being trodden by them. 

 On the other hand the need for nitrogenous manures is not great : 

 as the pastures improve they should become well covered with 

 clover, which adds considerably to the stores of nitrogen in the 

 soil : further, any cake or meal fed to the animals at grass increases 

 the nitrogen supply by increasing the richness of the excretions. 

 Cases are on record, however, where a dressing of nitrogenous 

 manure has proved useful on an improved pasture by causing the 

 grass to start growing early. 



Roughly speaking there are four sorts of poor pasture in the 

 country : 



1. On poor clay, covered with small bare patches, and carrying 

 bent grass which gives it a peculiar russet brown appearance in 

 autumn. This has formed the subject of a good deal of experi- 

 ment all over England and Wales, and especially in the northern 

 counties. It has been shown that cake and nitrogenous manures 

 produce little, if any, permanent benefit, but a liberal dressing 

 of basic slag causes marked improvement, fostering the develop- 

 ment of white clover. Usually 10 cwts of slag is all that is wanted 

 to convert failure into success. In some few cases it has happened 

 that clover was absent altogether : it is then necessary to harrow in 

 some wild white clover seed. The best known instance is at Cockle 

 Park, Northumberland, a poor pasture lying on a subsoil of poor 

 yellow boulder clay, which had never been worth more than 10s. 

 per acre, and in 1897 when the experiment began was said to be 



