The Management of Grass Land. 
13 
bones, or other artificial manures in the spring. By such means 
the grasses become improved and sweetened, and are eaten up 
much closer, which is the great desideratum to effect a change in 
the herbage of any pasture under improvement. 
In low swampy situations, a few really deep drains, laid round 
or across the fields according to situation, have frequently had the 
effect of not only laying the particular field dry, but many of the 
surrounding ponds ; in fact, the worse the land the deeper the 
drains should be. Yet the remark that land has been over- 
drained is familiar in many districts; hence it is inferred that the 
pastures have been spoiled. Now this inference is inapplicable 
to the draining, the soil being changed for the better ! The 
food of the aquatic grasses having been removed, they become dry 
and inactive : it is true the existing grasses become more like 
stubble than grass. But having so far changed the soil, it is 
equally necessary to change the herbage, by other agents — such 
as suitable top-dressings to sweeten and increase the herbage, that 
the truly important branch of close feeding may be effected. 
The pasture then becomes gradually improved, and nature sup- 
plies her indigenous grasses, suitable to the then improved 
character of the soil, as the aquatic or other spurious grasses in 
the absence of their food decline. 
Those grasses found upon moderately good surface soils rest- 
ing upon subsoils that have a coat of peat earth upon them, 
between the lower strata of clay and surface soil, are slow in their 
improvement ; although ranging in good districts and surrounded 
with excellent cropping land, they carry but little stock, and prove 
an unprofitable occupation : such pastures require renewing, 
whereby the more modern grasses would be sown, and conse- 
quently meet the changed composition of the soil. After this 
each field would be doubled in value for grazing purposes, but 
of still greater value if kept under the plough. 
From the apparent slow progress made in the improvement of 
the general class of inferior pastures by the tenants, it is evi- 
dently a permanent or landlord's question. Possibly the better 
plan for both is to meet halfway, the landlord finding materials, 
and the tenant performing the workmanship. A sound scale 
for general improvements might indeed be adopted, and "two 
blades of grass might be raised where only one grew before " — the 
one by the landlord and the other by the tenant. 
The lands laid down to artificial grass in connection with the 
arable culture of a farm, for one, two, or more years, are also 
worthy of notice, as they show the principle by which general 
improvements may be effected, either with a view to rest the 
arable lands for a time or to remain for permanent pasture. In 
the latter case it is alike important and interesting to notice the 
