Recent Experiences in laying down Land to Grass. 149 
form a good permanent pasture, much probably depending upon 
the estimate formed of what a good permanent pasture is. Mr. 
James Stratton, who has laid 2,000 acres down in Hampshire, 
Bays that by following his management the pasture is established 
in one year ; but as he advises subsequent liberal treatment, he 
can hardly mean that his pasture has been completely made in 
one year. Mr. "\V. H. Hall, in the dry climate near Newmarket, 
has not got a pasture yet, after trials varying from four to four- 
teen years. Under favourable circumstances, with good land 
and with liberal treatment, about eight years may be taken 
as the time that the land requires to eliminate the weeds and 
unsuitable grasses, and to cover itself with that thick mass of 
closely growing plants resembling what is seen on sound old 
natural grazing lands. But, Sir John B. Lawes tells me, there 
still remains work to be done underground. Thirty years will 
not produce the dense accumulation of roots found in old grass 
land, which constitutes a reservoir containing the elements of 
stored-up fertility in the shape of nitrogen and potash. 
Much has been said and written about land being allowed 
to go to grass without seeds being sown. This appears to have 
been an ordinary method between two and three hundred years 
ago. Barnaby Googe, in his •' Whole Art and Trade of 
Husbandry," dated 1614, wi'ites : — 
" "When you meane to let your ground lie againe forMeddow or Pasture, 
your best is to sowe it with Oates, and to harrow the ground even and levell, 
and to hurle out all the stones, and such things as may hurt the sythe : for 
Dates i3 a great breeder of grasse. Some doe cast Ilay-seede, gathered from 
the Hay-loft or the Rackes, over the ground before they harrow it." 
Many of our finest old grazing grounds were in all pro- 
bability started in this simple manner. Sir J. B. Lawes says 
that no doubt any land, without being sown, will form a pasture 
in time, but that seeding accelerates the process. Mr. Charles 
Howard reports that he has heard old farming friends say that 
some of the best gi-azing land they knew was what is called 
"tumble-down." Mr. Curteis Neve gives an account of worth- 
less grasses that he has seen in neighbouring self-sown pastures. 
Mr. Reginald A. Warren has watched the process in poor brashy 
land and sour clay in the Cotswold district, and the result has 
been better than he would have expected. Mr. Clare Sewell 
Read says such fields cannot make a pasture in a generation, if 
they ever do. Mr. William Stratton has fair pastures that 
formed themselves after sainfoin disappeared, and he mentions 
some fine grass land that started as a foul wheat-stubble thirty 
years ago. 
The speed of the development of a pasture, begun by the 
easy plan of leaving it alone, depends in a great degree on 
