Rouen, Roughingii, or Rowings. 71 



have shown how, by the agency of turf, in the case of 

 lands to be kept in arable, good crops of roots and 

 cereals may be produced at the lowest possible cost. 

 It remains to show how grass lands should be managed 

 so as to aid still further in lessening the cost of pro- 

 duction by reducing the area of the root crop, and 

 therefore the area under plough, to the lowest possible 

 limits. This is a point our ancestors successfully 

 grappled with, and we can only do so, as far as I can 

 see, by following their example. Let us, then, revert 

 to the methods they practised, and which have been 

 alluded to in the last chapter, and one of which, as we 

 shall see, is still practised in South Wales. 



And, first of all, let us consider the value of what, in 

 Arthur Young's days, was termed rouen — a word 

 which I have been unable exactly to trace ; the nearest 

 approach I can find to it is roughings or rowings 

 (aftermath), a south-country word given in his " Pro- 

 vincial Glossary" by Francis Grose: London, 1811 — 

 which seems to have been particularly applied to 

 aftermath preserved for spring use. As it is a short 

 word, it may be as well to use it, and more especially 

 as it will probably be even more used in the future 

 than it was in Arthur Young's days. 



The practice of relying on rouen for spring use seems 

 to have been a very ancient one, and I may remind 

 the reader that Arthur Young speaks highly of it after 

 an experience of twenty-five years of its value, and 

 that he states that he "scarcely knew a person that 

 tried it who ever gave it up." He complains of turnips 

 as being expensive, and hable to be injured by frost, 

 while after his experience of the winter of 1794-95, 

 which he speaks of as the hardest ever known, he 

 was able to declare that rouen was as safely to be 

 reUed on in severe winters as during the milder ones 

 in which it was tried. The grass, it was pointed out 

 by another agriculturist quoted by Young, is much 

 more early and productive if, after mowing, no stock 



