Rouen, Roughings or Rowings. 71 



assistance from root crops ; for, as Sir John Lawes has 

 pointed out, if we deduct the litter and food required 

 for horses, grass land can produce more stock than 

 arable, and it must always be remembered that the 

 cheapest food we can grow for stock is grass. The last 

 is a fact that seems to have been long ago perceived, 

 and the bearing of it on our present agricultural 

 conditions, and the deduction that should be drawn 

 from it, are of the utmost importance. 



I have said, in a previous chapter, that the rapid 

 production of a good turf is the key to all our agricul- 

 tural difficulties, so far as these can be solved by the wit 

 of man ; but it must be considered that this method of 

 solution can only be fully successful if the cheapening 

 of production, which we can alone attain through the 

 agency of turf, is developed all along the line. I have 

 shown- how, by the agency of turf, in the case of 

 lands to be kept in arable, good crops of roots and 

 cereals may be produced at the lowest possible cost. 

 It remains to show how grass lands should be managed 

 so as to aid still further in lessening the cost of pro- 

 duction by reducing the area of the root crop, and 

 therefore the area under plough, to the lowest possible 

 limits. This is a point our ancestors successfully 

 grappled with, and we can only do so, as far as I can 

 see, by following their example. Let us, then, revert 

 to the methods they practised, and which have been 

 alluded to in the last chapter, and one of which, as we 

 shall see, is still practised in South Wales. 



And first of all, let us consider the value of what, in 

 Arthur Young's days, was termed rouen — a word which 

 I have been unable exactly to trace ; the nearest 

 approach I can find to it is roughings or rowings 

 (aftermath), a south-country word given in his " Pro- 

 vincial Glossary " by Francis Grose : London, 1811 — 

 which seems to have been particularly applied to 

 aftermath preserved for spring use. As it is a short 

 word, it may be as well to use it, and more especially 



