Lord Leicester's System. 17 



is necessary to carry out the following plan to obtain a vsatis- 

 factory result. The seed should be selected from those natural 

 grasses that appear to thrive best in the waste places in the 

 locality in which the pasture is to be formed. The seed should 

 be purchased guaranteed as to purity and germinative power. 

 It is most important not to feed the pasture close with sheep 

 during the summer, when the grasses are in full growth, or the 

 more valuable grasses would perish, and weeds and moss take 

 their place ; more especially is this necessary in the treatment 

 of permanent pasture. I have, as an experiment, left on very 

 poor soil a pasture down for sixteen years, and I do not find 

 that the herbage has diminished ; but there is no doubt that 

 pastures aie of most value for the first few years after being 

 laid down, when they are exclusively given up to the feeding 

 of sheep. If the land is to accumulate fertility, and enable 

 four profitable crops to be obtained without the application of 

 any manure, the minimum time under which the land should 

 remain in pasture would be six years. 



" I believe that it is generally the, practice that the first crop 

 on breaking up a pasture should be a corn crop. I think that 

 this would be fatal to obtaining three crops following without 

 the aid of manure. If the land were thoroughly clean, as it 

 should be when laid down to grass, when broken up after being 

 down for several years it will be very foul. It is probable that 

 no merchant can deliver natural grass seeds absolutely free from 

 the seeds of couch grass.* Clover seeds may be obtained free of 



* Note hy Mr. Hunter, Chester.— The seeds of the true couch grass 

 (Triticum re-pens) are seldom found in grass seeds, and they should 

 never be present in properly-machined seeds, because they are larger 

 in size than the grass seeds in general use ; and, as two or more 

 couch grass seeds usually adhere together, their removal from other 

 grass seeds is easily effected. The reproduction of Triticum repens 

 is not, however, from seed, but from the creeping underground 

 stems which send up shoots from every joint. Other species of 

 grasses, such as smooth-stalked meadow grass and bent grass, are 

 also known as couch grass, and both these species produce abund- 

 ance of seeds, which may be either in the land sown down or in the 

 purchased grass seeds. The seeds of all agricultural grasses in 

 ordinary use can be obtained absolutely free from the seeds of couch 

 grass, and all kinds of grass seeds may now be obtained of as high 

 a degree of purity as that of clovers, 



B 



