THE EXTENSION OF PA8TUEES. 3 



way of enabling them to do justice to their holdings is by laying 

 down a portion to grass. ^ 



The best mode of dealing with the present phase of the 

 labour difficulty has become an anxious question. Few farmers 

 would object to pay the increase in wages were it possible in 

 return to obtain as good a day's work from the men as their 

 fathers gave for less money, but no such willing or efficient 

 labour is now to be got. The labourers' children remain long 

 enough at school to acquire a distaste for agricultural work, and, 

 disdaining the manual labour of rural life, they flock into the 

 towns, leaving the sickly and infirm to work upon tlie farms. So 

 that, having paid an education rate in addition to their other 

 heavy burdens, farmers find the cost of labour increased, and 

 its efficiency lowered. To meet the difficulty the arable farmer 

 must either invest in every kind of labour-saving machinery or 

 lay down so much land to grass as Vvdll reduce the labour bill to 

 a minimum. 



There are political economists who compare the laying down 

 of land to grass with the action of Scottish landowners in amal- 

 gamating poor sheep runs yielding little rent, and forming them 



' Of late yeai's the agricultural reports from our Colonies have been read with great 

 interest in this country. But though Colonial farmers have been eager purchasers of our 

 stock and implements, we have not hitherto found them admirers of our agricidtural 

 system. There are portions, however, of Canada and the Eastern States of America 

 which are rapidly passing into similar conditions to those prevailing in England, and the 

 accomplished Professor of Agiiculture at the Guelph Agricultural College in Ontario 

 lately created a considerable sensation by calling the attention of farmers in the Dominion 

 to the necessity of following the English lead in the laying down of land to pasture. In 

 a Lecture recently delivered, a copy of which he has been good enough to send me, are 

 the following remarks : — ' We ara bound to produce cheaper and in greater quantity. It 

 is not so much the area which is troubling, but the '' per acre per annum," than which 

 there is no truer gauge of national or individual wellbeing. Towards this end I respect- 

 fully submit that permanent pasture wiU have a great deal to say. As a stimulus to 

 healthy appreciation of the importance of permanent pasture, and as one of the best 

 possible ways to impress our people, I may ask why it is that Britain, with all her age, 

 experience, and wealth of other things, has already placed half her arable under this crop. 

 It is not altogether because of outside competition in other crops, nor of climatic trouble, 

 but because she knows of no better way to conserve, to wait, and to make money by doing 

 little at the least risk and outlay. Britain has never hesitated how to " hedge " in her 

 agriculture when troubles arose, and to-day her farmers make more revenue per acre per 

 annum on the best pasture than from any other source.' 



B 2 



