18 Lord Leicester's System,. 



and which, in principle, is exactly the same as the 

 one I have pursued, so far as leaving the land for a 

 certain number of years in grass, and then taking four 

 crops in succession, is concerned. His Lordship's paper 

 is as follows : — 



, "As many enquiries are made as to the system I adopt in 

 treating poor lands under temporary pasture, I may state that it 

 is necessary to carry out the following plan to obtain a satis- 

 factory result. The seed should be selected from those natural 

 grasses that appear to thrive best in the waste places in the 

 locality in which the pasture is to be formed. The seed should 

 be purchased guaranteed as to purity and germinative power. 

 It is most important not to feed the pasture close with sheep 

 during the summer, when the grasses are in full growth, or the 

 more valuable grasses would perish, and weeds and moss take 

 their place ; more especially is this necessary in the treatment 

 of permanent pasture. I have, as an experiment, left on very 

 poor soil a pasture down for sixteen years, and I do not find that 

 the herbage has diminished ; but there is no doubt that pastures 

 are of most value for the first few years after being- laid 

 down, when they are exclusively given up to the feeding of sheep. 

 If ' the land is to accumulate fertility, and enable four profitable 

 crops to be obtained without the application of any manure, the 

 minimum time under which the land should remain in pasture 

 would be six years. 



" I believe that it is generally the praciace that the first crop on 

 breaking up of a pasture should be a com crop. I think that 

 this would be fatal to obtaining three crops following without 

 the aid of manure. If the land were thoroughly clean, as it 

 should be when laid down to grass, when broken up after being 

 down for several years it will be very foul. It is probable that 

 no merchant can deliver natural grass seeds absolutely free from 

 the seeds of couch grass.* Clover, seeds may be obtained free of 



* Note by Mr. Hunter, Chester. — The seeds of the true couch grass 

 Tritiewn repens) are iseldom found in grass seeds of other species in 

 general use, and they should never be present in propeily-machined •seeds, 

 because, being larger than ordinary grass seeds, and as two or more of 

 them usually adhere together, their removal from other species is easily 

 effected. The reproduction ot Tritieum repens is not, however, from seed, 

 but from the creeping underground stems which send up shoots from 



