456 THE ox. FATTENING. 



frequently seen cows, upon green clover at discretion, acquire a 

 remarkable degree of fatness, although they had not ceased to be 

 regularly milked. 



In those countries, the nature of whose climate is favorable to 

 pasturage, the rearing of cattle presents immense advantages ; but 

 the animals can only be fattened in those that are the most fertile. 

 The meadow that sufiBces for the growth and keep of a bullock will 

 not always bring the animal into condition for the butcher. Those 

 countries where the climate is moist, but long droughts rarely felt, 

 where neither the summer heats nor the winter colds are excessive — 

 the conditions, in fact, which are met with in the beautiful pasture 

 lands of England, in special — are those that prove most favorable 

 to the rearing and feeding of cattle. The pasture lands of Nor- 

 mandy and Brittany in France, of Switzerland and Holland, several 

 of the provinces watered by the Khine, &c., are also remarkable for 

 their luxuriant herbage. In such situations and with such advatages, 

 the grand object with the farmer is the production and fattening 

 of cattle. Whenever it has been possible to lay down extensive and 

 productive meadows, it is now beginning to be clearly understood 

 that the introduction of even the best system of rotation were to 

 make a false application of agricultural science. In my opinion, there 

 is no system of rotation, however well conceived and carried out. 

 which will stand comparison in point of productiveness with a natu- 

 ral meadow, favorably situated and properly attended to. The rea- 

 son of this is obvious, and follows from the very principles which 

 we have laid down in treating of rotations. The whole object in the 

 best system of husbandry is to make the earth produce the largest 

 possible quantity of organic matter in a given time. But in such a 

 system we are limited by the climate, inasmuch as we are obliged so 

 to arrange matters that our crops shall always attain to complete 

 maturity ; the consequence of which is, that with all our pains the 

 soil remains unproductive during a certain number of weeks and 

 mouths towards the end of autumn, in the early spring, and through 

 the whole of the winter. But upon meadow lands, vegetation is in- 

 cessant ; the winter even does not interrupt it completely ; it still 

 revives and makes progress on the bright days ; and in the spring" 

 it proceeds when the mean temperature is but a few degrees above 

 the freezing point of water, and never ceases until it is checked 

 again by the severer cold of winter. It is therefore easy to obtain 

 conviction that a given surface of meadow land must necessarily 

 produce a larger quantity of forage than land laid out in any other 

 way. It is true that the forage thus obtained will not, like the cereal 

 grasses, answer immediately for the support of man ; but it neverthe- 

 less concurs powerfully in this by producing milk, and butter, and 

 cheese, and in breeding and fattening cattle ; let there be added to 

 all these the advantages of what may be called a permanent vegeta- 

 tion, that the cost of keeping it in order is infinitely less, and that 

 there is no risk to be run from failures of crops, and the vast advan- 

 tages of meadow or pasture land will meet us with all their force. 



