448 Report on Laying down Land to Permanent Pasture. 
of the soil at the same time. But considerable latitude may be 
allowed in the present day, such as might have proved injurious 
before a large consumption of artificial foods, and an expensive 
application of artificial manures, became general, and before the 
present improved machinery had been introduced. Two years' 
grass in the rotation may have a tendency to encourage coucb 
and render the land foul ; but a little extra care, with the use 
of some of the excellent cultivating implements now to be had, 
ought to enable farmers to completely master this difficulty. 
One thing may at least be maintained, viz., that there is not 
the same danger of exhausting the soil by two years' grass as by 
two years' successive corn crops. 
On the whole there appears to be a want of pliability in our 
system of agriculture. Many persons are the servants, not the 
masters, of their farms. A farm should be a machine, easily 
regulated in any part, each provided with its own stop and back 
action, and having adjustable movements for giving either a 
large or small delivery of any one produce according to the 
state of the market or the altered circumstances of the times. 
But the successful direction of a farm after this method requires 
foresight and managerial ability ; and even if there were more 
freedom of cultivation allowed by the general consent of the 
owners of the soil, there are numbers of tenants who would not, 
and others who could not, take advantage of it. 
The cost of converting arable land into permanent pasture^ 
and the length of time necessary before the operation is com- 
pletely remunerative, also doubtless prevent many persons from 
undertaking it. When land is laid down to grass, it is, above 
all, important that it should be well done. It is not sufficient 
simply to stop short in the rotation just where the usual one year's 
seed-shift alternates in the course of cropping, and let the land 
remain in grass ever after, — even though Timothy, cock's-foot, 
meadow fescue, and Dutch clover, be substituted for the usual 
clover and rye-grass in the mixture of seeds. The land must be 
laid down in good heart, and in a proper mechanical condition.' 
This requires expensive manuring, and a preparation of the 
soil for several seasons beforehand, or else a costly cultivation 
immediately preparatory to seeding down. Added to this, it 
is indispensably necessary that the land should afterwards be 
liberally manured for several years, to enable the plants to obtain 
firm rootage in the soil, to stimulate the growth of natural 
grasses, and to form a good " sole," whereby they may be held 
and nourished for the future. Although heavy crops of grass are 
raised for the first two years, when the operation is properly 
conducted, there appears to be a general agreement that in the 
third and fourth years there is a considerable falling off just 
