258 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES 



been able to justify his claim that what is primarily wanted to-day is 

 enormously increased facilities for the conduct of field experiments in 

 contra-distinction to field trials and demonstrations. That at least is 

 my claim, for I claim to be an agronomist, and in that capacity one who 

 has been responsible for the setting up of hundreds of weird little field 

 experiments involving in all literally thousands of plots. 



As always, however, the greatest and the final hope is the farmer him- 

 self, for he at least is untrammelled by the technique of science, and is not 

 a slave to the fashions current in science, while his major training is not 

 in collecting data, but in the gentle art of unadulterated observation. 

 Just because, therefore, of the immense accumulation of scientific know- 

 ledge, so much of it but half digested in the practical sphere, never so 

 urgently as at present has there been such a necessity for an abundance 

 of well-informed, originally-minded and affluent pioneers, men willing 

 and eager to transgress against every canon of good husbandry, and to 

 explore, and almost de novo, the whole field of rotation of crops, and the 

 whole idea of rotation of pastures of different types and of stock over the 

 surface of the farm. 



This has been a long digression ; it has, however, been relevant to my 

 theme, and it has been on a question of undeniable importance and about 

 which I think I am entitled to express opinions. I will now return to 

 the ley. 



Grazing management affects the permissible duration of the grazing 

 ley to a marked degree. Thus he who bails cattle or folds poultry can 

 keep his leys down much longer than the ordinary farmer who thinks he 

 is grazing intensively, but in fact is doing nothing of the sort ; only the 

 close folder, or the tetherer, really grazes intensively, and by intensively 

 I mean without waste of any sort. But even under the cleverest manage- 

 ment sooner or later the sod will begin to become pot-bound, and 

 according to soil type, bent, soft brome, Yorkshire fog, weeds or moss will 

 proclaim the need of the plough and a new start. 



What to sow and how to establish are in the main twin problems — 

 twin to this extent, that what to sow is determined much more by every 

 shade of after-management that it is proposed to follow than by soil type ; 

 the trouble here is that agricultural chemistry has such a terribly long 

 start of agricultural biology. Grassland, like every crop the farmer 

 handles, is the plaything of soil, climate and the biotic factor ; with 

 grassland the master factor is the biotic — that is to say, what man himself 

 does with his animals. One, and the most obvious, example will suffice — 

 the use and abuse of Italian rye-grass. Italian rye-grass is essentially a 

 grazing grass ; if allowed to grow away in a hay mixture it will smother 

 and depress other and higher yielding hay grasses. It should therefore 

 only be included in hay mixtures when such mixtures will be grazed 

 long into the spring or early summer, and when after a small and herby 

 hay crop aftermath is of prime importance. Italian rye-grass is of its 

 greatest value for sowing with grazing mixtures put down on an upturned 

 sod. The aim here is two-fold ; firstly, to bring treading feet and urine 

 on to the developing sward as soon as possible — this is the function of 

 the Italian rye-grass ; and secondly, to encourage the spread of wild 



