SOILING. 169 



age of the system, and then try to give full weight to all 

 the objections that may be urged against it ; fo-r no subject 

 is more than half discussed when we stop with the exami- 

 nation of one side. The advantages of the soiling system 

 are: 



1. SAVING LAND. 



The capacity of a farm to carry stock must soon be 

 regarded as its measure of value, and that even in a grain 

 region, for grain is an assistance and not an obstacle to 

 stock-keeping ; and, on the other hand, stock-feeding is an 

 assistance to grain-raising. France and Germany each 

 keeps more stock and raises more wheat now than fifty 

 years ago. These countries pasture very little, keeping 

 their fields in crops, and these are fed to the stock. It is 

 well-known to all farmers that an acre of good meadow 

 grass, properly cured into hay, will furnish food for a cow 

 or steer during the five or six months of winter ; and on 

 well-conducted stock farms, under the old system, it will 

 be found that three to four acres are devoted to pasture 

 one cow or steer through the warm season. Every stock- 

 feeder also knows that it takes more food to keep an animal 

 in cold than warm weather. This statement, open to proof 

 before every farmer's eyes, shows the great waste incident 

 to pasturing. This waste of food is caused 1. By walking 

 over it ; 2. By lying upon it; 3. By dunging and staling 

 upon it ; 4. By breathing upon it all of these so affect the 

 quality that animals will not eat the grass thus injured ; 

 5. By frequent cropping, preventing its rapid growth, and 

 thus reducing the amount grown upon an acre in a season. 

 An examination of a pasture shows the effects mentioned 

 by the tufts of old, uneaten grass, covering a large part of 

 the ground. The only way to prevent some of these effects 

 is to turn a large number of cattle for a few hours each day 

 into a comparatively small pasture, and not allow them to 

 remain over night. If there are cattle enough to eat off 

 8 



