On Laying down Land to Permanent Grass. 
259 
My experience leads me to believe that more highly farmed 
pastures pav best ; but circumstances may make it necessary that 
large breadths of land should be laid down in every imaginable 
tilth. There is hardly any tilth in which I have not sown grass, 
and I have at present a very satisfactory pasture three years old, 
sown with oats after wheat, following clover which followed wheat. 
I object strongly to mowing young grass, and I like, if 
possible, to allow certain portions of the grass to seed. When 
the grasses are all good it matters not how long the grass is 
allowed to grow, it will have no deleterious effect upon the 
stock, and is certain, sooner or later, to be eaten close. On the 
other hand, in meadows where Holcus lanatus, or soft woolly 
grass, or sorrel is prevalent, if the sheep are compelled by 
hunger to eat these grasses and weeds they are almost certain 
to be attacked with diarrhoea, especially in the case of young or 
delicate stock. 
I do not propose to enter into the details of farming stock on 
grass, or into the comparative values of grass and arable land ; 
but my impression, judging from the results I have seen in 
orchards in Kent, is that, if grass lands were farmed with the 
care and judgment bestowed on arable land, the results derived 
from pasture farming would be very different from what they 
are at present. The comparatively low price at which feeding 
stuffs and corn can be purchased ought to tend to their use on 
pastures in winter. 
Inasmuch as we can now, by the use of creosote, make almost 
imperishable fences of very inferior wood, it materially lessens 
a great item in the cost of forming pastures ; as where there are 
no hedges, other fences must be taken into consideration. I use 
creosote also for the feeding troughs, and find that the sheep eat 
from these as readily as from the uncreosoted troughs. 
Among the many arguments that I have heard urged against 
pastures, it is often stated that, if stock are fed very high and 
make the ground very rich, the land becomes very foul. This is 
directly opposed to my experience, as I have noticed that when 
the ground is rich, the grass good, and the stock highly fed, the 
meadow is not so much covered with the excrement of the 
animals as where the land is poor and the grass of bad quality. 
That is to say, a rich piece of pasture, with six, or even more, 
sheep per acre upon it, would be cleaner than a poor piece 
of pasture with three sheep an acre. 
I wish again to notice the late Mr. Carrington's new pastures 
because of his success in forming them with, or, as I would 
say, notwithstanding, his admixture of very considerable quan- 
tities of rye-grass and rib-grass. His pastures go far to prove 
that by means of an unlimited outlay in artificial and other 
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