14 Turf is the Best Manurial Agent. 



such lands, and those laid down to permanent pasture, 

 again brought under the plough will be the more 

 fitted for profitable corn growing than ever they were 

 before. 



I have said that the production of stock at the lowest 

 possible cost is what the farmer has solely to rely 

 upon, and this, of course, involves the production of 

 their food at the lowest possible cost. Both these 

 facts must obviously govern the farming policy of the 

 future. How, then, can the farmer most cheaply pro- 

 vide food for stock? This, again, depends, of course, 

 as to the way manure can be most cheaply supplied. 

 Now, as every gardener and cultivator well knows, the 

 cheapest and best form of manure is a good turf, for the 

 decajdng sod not only supplies the plants with food, but, 

 what is nearly as important, and some might say of even 

 greater importance, provides a good nest, or, in other 

 words, good physical conditions in the soil. And it was 

 on this turf that for so long a large proportion of, our 

 agriculture in Scotland depended, when vast quantities 

 of land, enclosed within the last fifty or sixty years, 

 were ploughed up. But in the process of time this 

 resource has become exhausted. It must be again 

 supplied, and this can only be effectively done within 

 a moderate period of time by growing a mixture of 

 large-rooting and deep-rooting plants, managing them 

 well after they have grown, and giving them four to 

 six years' time to form into a turf. When, then, the 

 farmer again ploughs up the land, he will start his 

 rotation with the same advantages which the farmers 

 had when they enclosed and ploughed up old pasture 

 lands ; he wiU thus be enabled to produce good crops 

 at the smallest expense,* and without the aid of any 

 manure, excepting some artificials with his turnips, and 



* It is important to remember that the farmer using the 4 or 5 course 

 rotation has to go to the expense of sowing grass seeds twice, while with 

 my 8 years' rotation there is only one sowing of grass seeds. 



