Lnprovcnients i-equired in Poor Grass Lands. 
317 
])asturos pvoduco a greater quantity of milk and of better quality 
than gravelly or sandy soils. Doubtless, where there is no 
ploughed ground on a grass farm, be the land ever so stiff, a few 
acres of pasture might be advantageously broken up for arable 
cultivation. In addition to the straw and prr)vender it would 
produce, it would furnish employment for the few horses which 
must be kept, and a little clay land can generally be managed 
better than a large tract. As a general rule, cheaper and equally 
efficacious improvements are to be effectetl^n such lands by their 
remaining in pasture ; and before the cold clay grass-lands are 
extensively broken up, there should be a more satisfactory ma- 
nagement and profitable return from the stiff arable soils of the 
county, for such lands which require most expense too often 
return the least profit. Now, the expense of these arable clay 
farms is of no ordinary kind : think, for a moment, of the cost of 
tillage, the heavy ploughings, and the expensive and oft-repeated 
fallowings these lands receive. Again, present crops and present 
prices are no criterion : it is not unlikely tliat when the piping 
times of peace return, the prices which ranged from 1848 to 1853 
will return also. Fleets of noble merchantmen, laden with corn 
from the Baltic and Black Seas, will again cover the bosom of 
old Father Thames ; but it is not likely that those splendid ships 
will bring, from the countries washed by those seas, any fresh 
butter or milk for the Londoners' breakfast. Therefore it may 
be naturally expected that the price of dairy produce will, in the 
average of years, be more remunerative than the price of grain. 
From the description given of the management of the poor 
grass-land, it will be gleaned that it is by no means satisfactory. 
There are those stiff wet clays without proper ditches, water- 
furrows, or under-drains to carry off the surplus water. Some 
fields are constantly mown, and supplied now and then with a 
sliglit dressing of manure : the others are always fed, but the 
droppings of the cattle are never spread about ; and though they 
can produce nothing after November, the grass-land is poached 
by the cows all winter long. No course of management can be 
much worse than this, and nothing but a considerable expenditure 
and different treatment will make those poor dairy farms more 
profitable. They certainly are not highly rented, and yet there 
is no improvement or prosperity. The observations made in the 
last Report are equally true after the lapse of nearly fifty years. 
Mr. Priest says, " Upon some dairy farms the farmers Ijarely 
exist;" while a modern writer remarks on this district, "it affords 
little rent and a scanty existence to the husbandman." It is 
natural that the same causes should produce the same results, and 
as some of the dairy lands of Bucks are managed as they were in 
the beginning of this century, the poverty which existed then 
VOL. XVI, Y 
