72 Fogging the Land in South Wales. 



as it will probably be even laore used, in the future 

 than it was in Arthur Young's days. 



The practice of reljdng on rouen for spring use seems 

 to have been a very ancient one, and I may remind 

 the reader that Arthur Young speaks highly of it after 

 an experience of twenty-five years of its value, and 

 that he states that he "scarcely knew a person that 

 tried it who ever gave it up." He compla,ins of turnips 

 as being expensive, and liable to be injured by frost, 

 while after his experience of the winter of 1794-95, 

 which he speaks of as the hardest ever known, he was 

 able to declare that rouen was as safely to be relied on 

 in severe winters as during the milder ones in which it 

 was tried. The grass, it was pointed out by another 

 agriculturist quoted by Young, is much more early 

 and productive if, after mowing, no stock is turned in 

 till spring, as the dry herbage shelters the young grass 

 shoots, and thus promotes their growth. 



But there is another ancient practice which Young, 

 as we have seen, alludes to under the term fog, given, he 

 states, in South Wales to the growth of the whole year 

 kept till the ensuing winter and spring — a practice, he 

 tells us, " commionly found nowhere else." Stock of all 

 kinds, he says, were fed on it during these seasons, 

 and the system was found to kill moss, and improve the 

 grass by the quantity of seed produced ; he further 

 states that an acre of fog will support more cattle than 

 one acre of hay. I have made special inquiries, and 

 have obtained the following information from reliable 

 sources : — 



" The custom you refer to," writes my informant, " is still in 

 existence in parts of Cardiganshire, Carmarthen, and Pembroke. 

 It is generally termed ' fogging the land.' Owing to the pro- 

 verbial wet weather prevailing in South Wales, many farmers, 

 rather than run the risk of a poor hay crop, prefer leaving 

 •certain fields imgrazed from July till about February, when the 

 milch cows are turned thereon, then some young cattle generally 

 follow, and the horses get the last bite. Much of the grass 



