Land to Pei-manent Pasture. 63 



buckwheat, after taking a crop of winter vetches, 

 would probably be the best plan ; but though this 

 would evidently be, from Young's experience, a suitable 

 plan in the South of England, I have no means of 

 knowing whether it would be profitable to lay down in 

 the South of Scotland with this plant. At almost every 

 point, then, connected with this subject the writer is 

 sure to be confronted with difficulties arising from the 

 want of that information which might, and should, be 

 provided by local experimental farms. But though the 

 means for writing positively for the various locaUties 

 do not exist, it is clear that success may be attained 

 in various ways, and it will be useful to enumerate 

 them here in one group. 



There are, to begin with, the methods of Arthur 

 Young, who, as we have seen in the preceding chapter, 

 approves of sowing the seeds alone in August as being 

 the best method ; secondly, of sowing them in July 

 with buckwheat ; thirdly, with rape in August, on 

 soils not liable to bind with treading ; fourthly, of 

 sowing them with wheat early in September ; and 

 lastly, the worst method in his opinion, sowing them 

 with spring corn. Of the agriculturists whose opinions 

 are quoted by him one sowed with beans, which he 

 found more successful than any plan he had tried ; 

 while another sowed his grass seeds amongst turnips 

 in the spring as they were fed ofi" by sheep, and found 

 that the grass " ilourished beyond any other." Then 

 there is the system successfully practised by the late 

 Mr. John Wilson in Berwickshire for many years, and 

 of which he gave a full account in the North British 

 Agriculturist of January 21, 1885. His original practice 

 was, after turnips, to sow up with 2 bushels of Koenigs- 

 berg tares, 2 bushels of oats, half a bushel each of 

 Italian and perennial ryegrass, 4 lb. each of alsike, white 

 clover, and trefoil, and 2 lb. of cow clover. His later 

 practice was to diminish the ryegrass, and substitute 

 4 or 5 lb. of cocksfoot and timothy. He cut the crop 



