Letting up Pastures for Winter Keep. 73 



certainly tends to destroy moss, and many of the fallen seeds 

 will, of course, vegetate. Mr. Young is right with regard to one 

 acre of fog being of more value than one acre of hay, provided 

 it is a mild winter, with but little frost and snow, and in a 

 sheltered locality." 



I would here observe that the reader must not 

 suppose that the disadvantages alluded to by my 

 correspondent must occur always ; on the contrary, 

 they need never occur in the case of well laid down 

 pastures, and I had an interesting proof of this when, 

 on the 7th of June, 1884, 1 visited, in company with some 

 landlords and tenant-farmers, Mr. Faunce de Laune's 

 pastures at Sharsted Court. In one case my friend 

 had allowed a pasture in its fifth year to grow up, 

 intending to cut it for hay, but for some reason or other 

 he changed his mind, and turned sheep into it, which 

 were kept on the pasture in the autumn, winter, and 

 spring following. The result extremely astonished one 

 of the oldest, most experienced, and intelligent graziers 

 present, who could not at all account for finding on 

 the 7th of June such clean, level, close turf, with grasses 

 as fine as those on a lawn, following on the letting up 

 of the pasture the year before. But the explanation is 

 simple. Ordinary pastures, if so treated, would certainly 

 show deterioration, because they usually have a con- 

 siderable proportion of weeds and inferior grasses — 

 holcus especially. Were such pastures, then, allowed 

 to flower, and then grazed with sheep, they would pick 

 out the good kinds of grasses, and reject the bad 

 grasses and weeds. Then the large grasses, being 

 thinly distributed in the ground (as they commonly are 

 in most old pastures), would assume a coarse and 

 hassocky appearance, and the stems, in consequence of 

 the large grasses being thinly distributed, being very 

 strong, would not be closely eaten by sheep. But 

 when (as in the case of Mr. de Laune's grass under 

 consideration) the land is full of large grasses they keep 

 each other in subjection, or, in other words, fine ; and 



