CHAPTER V. 



LAYING DOWN LAND TO GRASS, AND THE TREATMENT OF 

 THE PASTURE. 



AS Byron has well said, there is nothing so diiBcult 

 in poesie as a beginning, except perhaps an 

 ending, a remark which applies to many subjects, and 

 I confess I am rather at a loss to know how far to go 

 back in my treatment of this subject. Those who 

 wrote on agriculture long ago, and undertakings con- 

 nected with it, generally seemed to aim at a remote 

 start, and we accordingly find that the writer of the 

 article on agriculture in " The Complete Farmer, or 

 a General Dictionary of Husbandry in all its Branches," 

 the fourth edition of which was published in 1793, 

 claims for the art of agriculture " the precedence of all 

 others in point of antiquity, it having been the sole 

 employment of our first parents in the delightful garden 

 of Eden," and continues by observing that " Adam 

 instructed his children in this most necessary art, both 

 by example and precept." And it may also be noted 

 that Mr. William (afterwards Sir William) Dugdale 

 went back a point further in his book on " Draining 

 and Imbanking " — work which he traces to a Divine 

 origin, seeing that — and he supports his statement by 

 quotations from Genesis — the Creator began with these 

 most necessary undertakings, having found that nothing 

 could be done with the world till it had, first of all, 

 been drained and embanked. While another writer, 

 when alluding to Poa aquatica (reedy sweet grass, or 

 meadow grass), has suggested that, from its feeding 

 qualities, it was probably on this grass that Nebuchad- 



