168 Experiences up to the end of October, 1904. 



be uninteresting to mention that it was a remarls made by this 

 tenant which led to much of the valuable results we have arrived at. 

 He once said to me, many years ago — " What we want is something 

 green and sappy to go with these grasses when they dry up in 

 summer." " You want, then," I remarked, "something which corre- 

 sponds to the dry grass as turnips do to hay." " That's just it," he 

 replied. I then sent to Mr. James Hunter, of Chester, for a list of 

 all those plants which stock would eat, and which would not dry 

 up in summer, and my subsequent study of the consequential results 

 arising from their use showed me their immense value in at once 

 tilling the soil, adding to our stores of reliable food for stock, deeply 

 manuring the land, and improving the health of crops and stock. 



One word more. There are large areas of land in these islands 

 steadily going from bad to worse. They are not suitable for per- 

 manent pasture, and still less are they suited at present prices for 

 profitable arable cultivation under the old system. Much of what is 

 still kept in arable is steadily declining in value, and no wonder, tor, 

 to quote again my late friend, Mr. Faunce de Laune, " farming, as 

 it is practised now, is more often the act of destroying natural 

 fertility " — he means by running out all the vegetable matter in the 

 soil — "than adding to it, and it is therefore no wonder that the 

 land becomes impoverished." Prom the impoverishment of the soil, 

 and large areas being allowed to what is called "fall down" to 

 profitless pasture, cottages are being rapidly emptied, and the whole 

 conditions and prospects of our agriculture are most unsatisfactory. 

 How this condition of things may be ameliorated I have shown in 

 these pages. It now only remains for the Government to propagate 

 what I have eventually, after many years of labour, proved to 

 the hilt. 



