Agricultural Maxima. 
451 
potatoes : he also gives a remarkable instance of productive 
pasturage : — 
" (rt.) I think I might have shown results in favour of planting potatoes 
upon land worked up and manured in the autumn, by the very great produce 
which has been reported to me, and is apparent in the bulk ; but, having been 
from home at the time of their being taken up, it did not occur to my mind to 
weigh a row or two, by which the weight per acre could have been ascertained. 
The foreman tells me that he weighed 10 potatoes, which were 13J lbs. ; other 
10, which were 14 lbs. ; and 2 singly, which weighed 2 lbs. each. The produce 
is doubtless very great. In former years I have worked the land into drills, 
manured it, and planted potatoes at this season (November), and with good suc- 
cess ; but on one occasion, when a severe frost came on, without snow, late in 
the season, the potatoes suffered a little, and the crop was rather deficient. Since 
that time I have worked and manured the land at this season, as was done with 
that from which the large produce I have mentioned has just been taken, and 
as has been done now for the next year's crop. In Februaiy or March, or as 
soon as the land is in good order, the plants are put in by a man stej^ping 
backward on the drill, and inserting a spade at proper intervals so deep as to 
reach the manure ; he is accompanied by a boy or girl, who drops in the set, 
and the earth is allowed to close over it. In this way the land has been mel- 
lowed by the exposure to winter weather, retains its moisture much better 
than when newly worked up in spring, and has imbibed a richness from the 
gradual fermentation of the manure imder the surface for some months. I 
have found, in the late dry summer, my small plot of 3 acres of mangold to 
succeed much better on land prepared in that way than that of my neigh- 
bours sown upon land worked up in the spring. 
" (&.) There is a subject which I think particularly worthy of attention at 
this time, when butcher's meat and wool are by so much the most remunera- 
tive of all the farmer's produce. I am opposed to the breaking uj) of rich old 
grazing pastures, for the reason just stated ; but there is much grass-land in 
the country of inferior quality and produce, which would pay well for re- 
claiming, whether to be continued in tillage or restored to pasture. My son, 
at Milfield Hill, in this county, had 100 acres of that description at the 
extremity of his estate, lying rather high, which had not been deemed worth 
cultivating, and was estimated at 5s. an acre per annum for grazing yoimg 
stock. He broke it up, submitted it to a course of cultivation, and, after 
limiiig and growing some crops . of oats and rape (the latter, of course, con- 
sumed on the ground by sheep to consolidate and manure it), he sowed it to 
grass without com. Those fields have been let to be grazed from the 1st May 
to Christmas, at rents varying according to quality, from 40s. to 60s. an acre. 
How long this may continue one cannot say ; but, at all events, after carrying 
so much stock, they will be in a good state for growing crops under a course 
of tillage." 
The full history of the land to which Mr. Grey refers is given 
in the article Agriculture, * Encycl. Britannica.' 
12. Mention must here be made of the extraordinary growth 
of Italian rye-grass obtained from poor sandy soil in the neigh- 
bourhood of Ayr by the practice of irrigation, or rather by wash- 
ing heavy dressings of manure into the land by copious floodings 
of water delivered through underground pipes. I refer especially 
to Mr. Telfer's experience on Canning Park Farm. The seed is 
sown in autumn, about 4 bushels per acre, and brushed in and 
watered, and left till spring. 10 or 12 tons per acre are yielded 
2 G 2 
