108 PEEMANENT AND TEMPOEAEY PASTUEES. 



in which grazing is conducted. It should not be necessary to 

 repeat so trite a remark as that land is never enriched by the 

 droppings of cattle fed exclusively upon its herbage, but, on the 

 contrary, must by degrees become the poorer for supporting the 

 lives and increasing the weight of the animals which graze upon 

 it. In milk and flesh the land yields its produce in highly con- 

 centrated forms, and without external aid the process of exhaus- 

 tion must of necessity go on. But when the herbage consumed is 

 supplemented with cake, corn, roots, hay, or other extraneous 

 food, benefit is conferred on the pasture in addition to the advan- 

 tage which the animals derive from it. The improvement will, of 

 course, be gradual, and its progress be regulated by the quantity 

 and the quality of the additional food supplied. In this extra 

 feeding of grazing animals there is a simple and economical means 

 of enriching a poor pasture, and the increased weight of the stock 

 is an immediate if only a partial return of the outlay. Agricul- 

 tural chemists tell us, and their analyses are supported by expe- 

 rience, that animals only assimilate one- tenth of the nutritious 

 qualities of cake or other highly concentrated feeding stuffs, and 

 that the remaining nine-tenths, after passing through the cattle, 

 are available for vegetation, in a form specially adapted to meet 

 the requirements of plant life. This explains the marked improve- 

 ment which is always observable when grass is depastured by 

 cake-fed cattle — an improvement superior to that effected by a 

 dressing of farm-yard manure, because none of the valuable 

 elements are lost by fermentation. And this fact suggests the 

 economical aspect of the practice. The carting of heavy bulks of 

 manure is avoided, and the land at once has the benefit of the 

 droppings. When manure is stacked in heaps, or is allowed 

 to He in the farm-yard, some of its most fertilising constituents 

 drain away or are dissipated in the atmosphere. It will also 

 be evident that to graze a pasture by day and fold on the 

 arable at night is a very ingenious device for ruining grass land. 

 Even when sheep are helped Avith cake it is no sufficient compensa- 

 tion for their absence during twelve out of the twenty-four hours. 



