On Breakiny up Gi'oss Lands. 
181 
them, and many occupiers do not hesitate to state that to improve 
the pasture would spoil their cheese. The fact, however, that in 
some parts of England, and many parts abroad, the richer and 
better the pasture, the better the cheese, contradicts this notion ; 
and this bemg the case, I see no reason why it should not be so 
on every soil. The principal difference is in the management, 
and not the pasture. It is on dairy-farms of this description that 
a great advantage will be gained by breaking up a portion of such 
pasture, which will not only prove an advantage to the farmer, 
landowner, and labourer, as far as that which is broken up is con- 
cerned, but will be the means of so far improving the remainder 
as to enable the farmer to effect it, and still keep as much dairy 
stock as ever. 
Notwithstanding the advantages shown by our calculations, we 
must not be so led away by prospects of gain as to induce us to 
advocate the indiscriminate breaking up of all such pastures, and 
to feel desirous of doing away with dairy farming altogether. 
This would be stepping from one extreme to the other, and pro- 
bably a more dangerous one. I think it will be admitted by all 
that we are not prepared to give up cheese-making. On rich lands 
it has not been very much less profitable than the growth of corn 
to either farmer or landowner when properly attended to. Se- 
condary descriptions of pastures, and such as have been allowed 
to deteriorate, would be more profitable in arable, and would 
afford a great deal more employment for the labourer than dairy- 
farming does on those lands, yet it is a species of husbandry that 
we cannot dispense with, unless we are to import more cheese 
than at present. The breaking up, too, of our grass-land beyond 
a certain proportion would of itself have a tendency to raise the 
price of the article, the means of the production of which had 
become much contracted, and at the same time its consumption 
increased. 
Should the time ever arrive when the English farmer shall be 
enabled to produce cheese from arable land, all our pasture lands, 
except those of the very best quality, would be broken up. I 
have every reason to believe that the breaking up of a portion of 
the pasture land of our dairy districts would be the means of im- 
proving the remainder of the grass land, from which an increased 
produce of cheese would be obtained equivalent to the quantity 
produced from the whole of the grass land before. If this be 
proved, I have shown that the proportion which can be thus 
spared for the plough will be a clear gain to the country. 
From examining this subject rather closely, I conclude that 
at least one-fourth of the present dairy -jmsture may be broken up, 
and our clieese and butter not be diminished ; and I see a strong 
probability that our cheese and butter would even increase with 
