for Agricultural Purposes. 
279 
grass and all young plants it has covered to appear fresher and 
more luxuriant when the covering disappears. And the selfsame 
influence, although in a less degree, becomes manifested when 
thorns or brushwood remain over the portion of a grass field 
nearest the fence when the latter has been trimmed or made just 
before or during winter. Moreover the favourite custom of many 
light land farmers of spreading long dung on their young seeds or 
mixed clovers and grasses in winter or early spring has its chief 
utility in sheltering the tender plants from frosts and nipping 
winds. There is fertilising influence also, no doubt, more or 
less according to the feeding of the animals which made the 
manure ; but some farmers are so well aware that the provision 
of shelter is the chief benefit rendered that when they have 
insufficient long dung, and straw happens to be abundant, they 
have strewn the latter over their young clover and grasses, and 
found that the beneficial result has nearly, if not quite, equalled 
that of the dung. 
The following is a fact bearing on the matter. Mr. Gurney, 
having observed what many may have remarked, that whenever 
any loose object, a bare branch or an old gate, lies on a meadow 
in March the grass grows luxuriantly beneath it, conceived the 
idea of spreading straw over a field at the rate of about a ton 
to the acre with the object of promoting the growth of the grass. 
The scheme succeeded so well that it was adopted by many 
neighbouring farmers in Cornwall, and thus, interestingly 
enough, a thin coat of dry straw produced the same effect 
which had hitherto been obtained only by a thin sheet of 
moving water. 
Mr. Pusey, reasoning as to the cause of this, remarks on 
p. 464, Vol. X. 1st Series of the Journal (1849) : — 
I can see hut one. Gardeners, it is well known, spread nets over their 
young crops to protect them from morning frosts in the spring. This effect 
is clearly due to the interception of the radiation of heat. The earth is con- 
stantly sending forth in a perpendicular direction, upwards into empty 
space, its warmth derived from the sun, just as a stove darts its heat around 
it. But a very slight interruption, such as the gardener’s net, is found to 
check the passage of the heat, and thus to prevent that morning frost on the 
surface, so much dreaded by gardeners. 
The technical arts in relation to the formation and manage- 
ment of water meadows were, for the matter of that, just as well 
understood in Arthur Young’s days as now. He insisted on an 
intimate reliance on the spirit-level in laying them out, and 
gave facts to prove that by relying merely on the eye prac- 
titioners have often been deceived as to the extent of areas 
possible to be irrigated by available streams. He quoted some 
interesting examples illustrative of the imperative necessity of 
