IMMEDIATE AFTER-MANAGEMENT OF NEW PASTUEES. 101 



to be kept constantly in view is the promotion of free growth 

 before winter sets in. Topping the young grass with the scythe 

 and rolUng will prove advantageous to the plants in helping them 

 to cover the gj-ound and become firmly rooted> Immediately 

 the growth begins in spring mow once more, and a final rolhng 

 is also essential. After an autumn sowing it is especially neces- 

 sary to cut the hay crop very early. When it is carried, cattle 

 may be turned in to graze, but sheep had better be kept off 

 until the following year. 



Several of the finer grasses, if permitted to seed in a young 

 state, are so weakened that they die, and they appear to perish 

 more readily on some soils than they do on others. This 

 does not show that such grasses should be excluded from a pre- 

 scription for a permanent pasture as some writers afiirm. It 

 would be just as reasonable to say that because certain varieties 

 which revel in a dry soil disappear after a succession of wet 

 summers, therefore they ought to be omitted. A pasture is laid 

 down that it may yield nutritious herbage, not that seed may be 

 saved from it. Grasses which require three or four years to 

 attain maturity, and there are varieties which do not reach their 

 highest vigour in less time, must of necessity be weakened or 

 destroyed by producing seed in the first or second year after 

 sowing, just as animals are permanently stunted by allowing 

 them to reproduce their species at too early an age. 



The opinion is widely entertained that the critical period of 

 a pasture is the third or fourth year after it has been sown. But 

 if a pasture begins to fail about that time, it is probably attri- 

 butable to mismanagement and starvation. No farmer supposes 

 for a moment that he can for several years in succession' take 

 much ofi" arable land and put nothing on it. Yet this is a very 

 common delusion concerning grass land. And I say most em- 

 phatically that the man who thinks it reasonable to treat either 

 a new or an old pasture on that principle deserves to find it 

 deteriorate in quantity and in quality too. Liberties of this kind 

 are sometimes taken with a rich old pasture, and the injury may 



