58 Laying Down Land to. Grass. 



CHAPTER V. 



LAYING DOWN LAND TO GEASS, AND THE TREATJIENT OF 

 THE PASTURE. 



AS Byron has well'said, there is nothing so difficult 

 in poesie as a beginning, except perhaps an 

 ending, a remark which applies to many subjects, 

 and I confess I am rather at a loss to know how far to gb 

 back in my treatment of this subject. Those who 

 wrote on agriculture long ago, and undertakings con- 

 nected with it, generally seemed to aim at a remote 

 start, and we accordingly find that the writer of the 

 article on agriculture in " The Complete Farmer, or 

 a General Dictionary of >Husbandry in all its Branches," 

 the fourth edition of which was published in 1793, 

 claims for the art of agriculture " the precedence of all 

 others in point of antiquity, it having been the sole 

 employment of our first parents in the delightful garden 

 of Eden," and continues by observing that " Adam 

 instructed his children^in this most necessary art, both 

 by example and precept." And it may also be noted 

 that Mr. William (afterwards Sir William) Dugdale 

 went back a point further in his book on "Draining 

 and Imbanking" — work which he traces to a Divine 

 origin, seeing that — and he ^supports his statement by 

 quotations from Genesis — the Creator began with these 

 most necessary undertakings, having found that nothing 

 could be done with^the world till it had, first of all, 

 been drained and embanked. While another writer, 

 when alluding to Poa aquatica (reed, or sweet water 

 meadow grass), has _ suggested that, from its feeding 

 qualities, it was probably^on this grass that Nebuchad- 

 nezzar subsisted when he was turned into the wilder- 



