458 Report on Laying down Land to Permanent Pasture. 
Principally on account of tlie increased value of stock, but partly also on 
account of the advanced price of labour, I have laid down upwards of 70 acres. 
I selected land which had a good water supply, and which 1 considered capable 
of fattening cattle and sheep. I have tried different modes of preparing the 
land, but what I have sown down with rape and seeds in July — the previous 
years crop having been com out of lea — has answered the best. 
The crop should on no account be eaten bare the first year, or many of the 
young grasses will be destroyed. 
I aj^prove of manuring the young seeds in the autumn, and grazing the 
following year with young cattle. At the end of the second or third year, I 
have generally given in the month of February from 6 to 8 cwt. per acre of 
crushed bones. Without going into details, I am satisfied the increasing my 
pasturage has been a judicious step. I have now something like three times 
the quantity of stock that my farm formerly carried ; for instance, where 
twenty years since I fed something like 70 sheep during the year, I have now 
(June lb74) already sold 200 fat hoggs, and have still remaining 1-50 ewes 
with over 2C0 lambs, besides something like SO head of cattle. The greatest 
improvement I have made on my farm is with respect to what was formerly 
a coarse, wet, rough j asture of 95 acres, which irew a kind of herbage that 
nothing would eat. This I thoroughly drained, and dressed with half a ton 
of dissolved bones to the acre — 1 like the month of February the best for 
applying bones to grass- land if the weather is mUd and seasonable — (liaie I tried 
without effect). This pasture carries fully three times the amount of stock it 
used to do, besides improving them to a much greater degree. The climate of 
this neighbotirhood being moist, and the soil generally retentive, the land 
cannot be made too dry either for grass or tillage. With regard to my arable 
land, I have reduced my rotation from a five- to a four-course shift, and in 
this way I am able, with extra manuring, to produce the same bulk of straw 
crop as before, with considerably less land under rotation of cropping. 
Some twenty years ago the following quantity of stock kept on the land 
I now occupy will be pretty near the mark : — iO to 45 head of cattle, and aboat 
70 sheep — at the present time 90 to 100 head of cattle, and from 350 to 400 
sheep — besides an increase in horses in comparison, and fullj" as much bulk in 
crop. 
J. C. ToppEc. 
9. Pkestox Hows, Whitehaven, Ccmbekland. 
This farm, which I rent from year to year, under the Earl of Lonsdale, 
without a tenant-right, comprises an area of 400 acres. The soil and subsoil 
are extremely various, one part lieing stiff clay on a clay subsoil; another, 
good loam on the magnesian limestone ; and some, light soil on red sandstone. 
In 1846, mainly on account of the then predatory habits of dur mining 
population (several of my fields having footpaths over them), I determined to 
increase my quantity of pasture land, which even then extended to 125 acres; 
and since that time I have laid down about 60 acres. 
At first I prepared the land by a bare fallow or green crop, sowing down 
the following siiring with rape and seeds. Tliis plan, however, not answering 
to my satisfaction, I have since adopted, and much prefer, the j^Ian of taking 
a crop of wheat after the fallow or roots, and then (weather permitting), 
sowing the grass-.seLds about the end of April, first harrowing the wheat three 
or four times over in order to secure a proper seed-lx-d. I sow the seeds (light 
and heavy) at one operation, and the best dressing I have met with fs th« 
one commonly known in the North of England as "Jefferson's mixture ;"' this 
is comi)osed as follows : — 
