Derby Prize-Farm Competition, 1881. 
469 
as the early autumn — when cabhages supplement the failing 
grass, and are continued to be used with much success long after 
the cows have taken up their winter-quarters in the homestead. 
They are then sliced or pulped and mixed with grains, chop 
(chaff), and other dry provender. The weight of cabbages per 
acre was immense, especially in the one instance in which they 
were grown with liquid manure, in addition to a tremendous 
dressing of solid manures. 
Although the proportion of the arable land to the pasture is 
small, yet a considerable extent of the grass-seeds upon the 
ploughed ground remains down more than one year. It seems 
singular that in other parts of the kingdom, where the rainfall 
is quite as heavy as at Derby, the four-course system of 
cropping should still be as religiously observed as it was in the 
days of dear corn and cheap labour. Now that corn-growing 
does not pay, and it is absolutely necessary, if some lands are to 
remain under the plough, to diminish their expenses, it is surely 
undesirable to always plough up ley ground after only one 
year's rest. The second year's grass may not be so prolific as 
the first, but there is no expense for seed, labour, or tillage, and 
the complaint that two years' seeds foul the land was disproved 
by the cleanly condition of the farms we inspected, where grass- 
seeds were commonly kept down two and sometimes three 
years. The corn crops which were grown upon the old seeds 
after one ploughing, whether wheat, barley, oats, or beans, were 
all alike good, the barley being especially grand ; some after a 
three years' ley being the best crops we have seen grown in any 
district or in any season. The mixture of seeds used upon the 
various farms we inspected for these two and three years' seeds, 
will be found in a subsequent portion of this report. All 
that we need remark here, is, that alsyke clover and Timothy- 
grass often form a portion of these mixtures, and also of per- 
manent grass-seeds, and that Timothy-grass, so commonly used 
by our grandfathers and which has been of late years almost 
driven out of our arable cultivation by different sorts of rye- 
grass, seems coming once more into general use. 
There may be many other districts of England in which stiff 
arable lands are being rapidly, of late, converted into grass, but 
there are only a few in which there has been such a long and 
steady progress in that direction. The most successful instances 
of forming new pastures are to be seen at Croxden Abbey, 
where the late Mr. Carrington, and his father before him, con- 
verted a large extent of ploughed land into most valuable 
pasture. As this profitable creation of good grass-land has been 
duly recorded in the Society's Journal by the man who mainly 
carried out these improvements, we need not attempt to describe 
