Remodelling our Agricultural System. 



then, and to others who had equal opportunities of 

 making sound forecasts, it was evident that a system 

 of cultivation depending largely on cereals would have 

 to give way to one mainly depending on the cultivation 

 of grass and forage plants, and also on cheapening the 

 cost of production all along the line, for it was evident 

 that if other countries could produce so much more 

 cheaply than we can we must produce more cheaply 

 than we do now or go to the wall. It was extremely 

 easy to conceive these ideas, and I accordingly at once 

 proceeded to attempt to put them into execution; but I 

 was not long in discovering that I had got hold of a 

 very difiBcult and complicated subject, and so much 

 so, indeed, that it is only now, after about thirty years' 

 practical experience on a large scale, and after numerous 

 experiments on all kinds of soil, and at many different 

 elevations, that I feel myself able to offer to the 

 agricultural world experiences and conclusions that 

 will, I venture to think, be of use in the work of 

 remodelling our own agricultural system so as to 

 bring it into harmony with the existing state of things 

 throughout the world. But though I have no doubt 

 that my experiences will be of value, I need hardly 

 say that, before adopting any of the changes to be 

 advocated in these pages, the agriculturist must weigh 

 carefully the whole of his own local conditions, and see 

 that, if he adopts any of my conclusions, he carries 

 them out down to the minutest particulars. For laying 

 down land to grass, and more especially the subsequent 

 management of the pasture, requires great skill and 

 attention, and what to an agriculturist who is inexperi- 

 enced in laying down land to grass may seem a trifling 

 matter is, if neglected, often the cause of an entire 

 or partial failure. And I am the more particularly 

 reminded of the necessity for this caution when I think 

 of the first and last parts of the following sentence 

 which Dr. Paris wrote in his memoir of the great Arthur 

 Young : — '■ For it has been said," wrote Dr. Paris, "and 



