Concluding Remarks. 203 



grown pasture that no one could distinguish from old grass. 

 I much regret not having kept note of the remarks made by 

 agriculturists - to the amount of one hundred a year— who have 

 visited the farm. On remarking to a visitor that some of 

 them had said that what they saw had been a revelation to them, 

 he said — "And it is a revelation to me too." When lately 

 showing an old agriculturist from East Lothian the Kaimrig 

 field (vtde page 29) he finally observed, with a strange mixture 

 of wonder and annoyance in his face *' We have been like 

 children." In some instances we have certainly trebled the 

 letting value of the land. Dr. Voelcker (chemist of the Eoyal 

 Agricultural Society of England) remarked when visiting 

 the farm in 1904 that I should have kept in each field an 

 imtouched patch to show what the land originally was, for that 

 it was now difficult to beUeve how bad it had been. What the 

 tenant who had for long occupied the farm declared to be the 

 worst field on it is now so changed that farmers will not believe 

 in its ever having been bad land. But just as land of originally 

 good quality, when mixed with a suitable proportion of vegetable 

 matter, may be turned into the worst possible land when this 

 necessary agent has been exhausted, so may the very worst land 

 be raised to the value of good if you " raise a thick turf on the 

 naked soU," and if we keep on raising another before the pre- 

 ceding one has been exhausted we shall have done all we can to 

 promote the fertility of the soil, and, therefore, the condition of 

 agriculture. I once said to an old tenant on the estate- " How 

 much more stock can you keep on your young grass fields since 

 you have adopted my advice as to altering your grasses ? " "I 

 can keep," he said, " one-third more stock," which, I need 

 hardly say, doubles the value of the land. " Now," I said, " I 

 wish to ask you another question. Did you not at one time 

 consider me to be (the fate of most innovators at first) a 

 madman ? •" He laughed heartily, wagged his head from side to 

 side, and said - " Oh, no, no, no ! " but in a tone which meant 

 " Yes, yes, yes ! " It may not be uninteresting to mention that 

 it was a remark made by this tenant which led to much of the 

 valuable results we have arrived at. He once said to me, many 

 years ago — " What we want is something green and sappy to go 

 with these grasses when they dry up in summer." " You want, 



