THE 



CLIFTON rARK SYSTEM 



OP 



FARMING AND LAYING DOWN LAND 

 TO GRASS. 



CHAPTER I. 



INTRODUCTORY. 



"Truth," says Milton, "is compared in scripture to a streaming 

 fountain ; if the waters flow not in a perpetual progression, they sicken 

 iijto a muddy pool of confonnity and tradition." Just as the spiritual 

 sluggard allows his religious afEairs to remain in the groove in which he 

 inherited them so does the agricultural sluggard, to save liimself the 

 trouble of thinking, allow his afEairs to be ruled by conformity and 

 tradition while the condition of the world calls loudlj for the agricultural 

 changes which are necessary in order to bring our system into line 'Vfith 

 the altered conditions of the present age. 



IT will, I think, Ije^satisfactory to the reader to be told 

 at the outset that I am an agticulturist by profes- 

 sion, having started as such in 1856 in India as a 

 practical planter — i.e., a planter managing and working 

 his own land. For upvrards of thirty years I have 

 farmed land on my property in Roxburghshire, and still 

 have in my occupation a farm of about 1250 acres. The 

 opporttmities I had for being iacquainted with the world- 

 wide causes which were sure to bring about a serious 

 *state of agricultural conditions in these islands showed 



