Tlie Improvement of Grass Lands. 
331 
■often heard recommended by graziers who have the best land ; 
but I believe it to apply only to the best land, as on other land 
the stock do not like the grass when it gets old, and will not eat 
it unless you either mow it or sow some salt upon it. 
Mr. Thompson, of Badminton, the Duke of Beaufort's agent, 
in a paper he read to the Kingscote Agricultural Association, 
relates an experiment made fifteen or sixteen years ago that came 
under his own inspection. He states that when he let Walls 
Court Farm, near Bristol, to Mr. Alderman Proctor, of the firm 
of Messrs. H. and T. Proctor, the well-known manure manufac- 
turers, there was a piece of very wet sour grass land, considered 
too bad to be brought to bear good herbage by simple draining 
and manuring. The option of breaking it up was consequently 
given him by the terms of the agreement. Before doing so, 
however, he said he should like to try the experiment whether it 
W£is possible to permanently improve such land without breaking 
it up. The draining was done most effectually in the winter, and 
during the following spring it was harrowed, bushed, and 
dragged until it was scarcely possible to tell whether it was a 
grass or arable field. He next gave it a dressing of artificial 
phosphatic manure, and by midsummer the clovers and other 
fine grasses had begun to show themselves. As there was very 
little to cut it was merely skimmed over, and in the following 
autumn he gave it another dressing of artificial manure, and 
during the following winter and spring a thorough good dressing 
of farmyard manure. The effect during the succeeding summer 
was something wonderful. He remarks : " I assure you I don't 
exaggerate when I say that I saw as fine a crop of grass cut on 
that land as on any I have ever met with, both as regards quality 
and quantity. The value of the land was in that short time 
permanently raised from 10s. to at least 21. per acre. It has 
been farmed ever since exactly in the same manner as the rest of 
the farm, and after fifteen years' cropping still maintains the 
character of being a piece of excellent pasture land." 
Irrigation is the next important point to be considered. This 
is capable of being made far more beneficial and more perfect 
than even where it is at present adopted. There are three or 
four different kinds of irrigation. The first and most important 
is that of irrigation with sewage ; secondly, with water by a regu- 
larly arranged system of ridge-and-furrow ; thirdly, by the catch- 
water system on the sides of hills and hilly fields ; and fourthly, 
by the use of floodgates on brooks, to throw the water over the 
meadows when it is thick and muddy from floods. Irrigation 
by sewage has long been a difficult problem, and is beyond the 
scope of this paper ; suffice it, therefore, to say that the system 
gains ground and that more attention must yet be paid to it, for 
