Science and Practice in Farm Cultivation Part 8

=The "Popular Science Review" appears in October, January, April, and July, price Half-a-Crown.=

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LONDON: ROBERT HARDWICKE, 192, PICCADILLY, W.

=SCIENCE AND PRACTICE=

IN

=FARM CULTIVATION.=

BY

JAMES BUCKMAN, F.L.S., F.G.S.

No. 2.

=HOW TO GROW GOOD GRa.s.sES.=

LONDON:

ROBERT HARDWICKE, 192, PICCADILLY.

1863.

_Fully Ill.u.s.trated, price 7s. 6d. complete in Cloth._

_Separate Parts, 1s. each._

=SCIENCE AND PRACTICE=

IN

=FARM CULTIVATION.=

BY

PROF. BUCKMAN, F.L.S., F.G.S.

=The complete Series consists of=

1. HOW TO GROW GOOD ROOTS.

2. HOW TO GROW GOOD GRa.s.sES.

3. HOW TO GROW GOOD CLOVER.

4. HOW TO GROW GOOD CORN.

5. HOW TO GROW GOOD HEDGES.

6. HOW TO GROW GOOD TIMBER.

7. HOW TO GROW GOOD ORCHARDS.

LONDON:

ROBERT HARDWICKE, 192, PICCADILLY.

HOW TO GROW GOOD GRa.s.sES.

CHAPTER IX.

ON THE NATURE OF MEADOWS AND PASTURES.

The terms "meadow" and "pasture" are usually employed together, as though they were really distinct things; yet few people think of them as different,-the fact being, that when a field is occupied with gra.s.s, it may be called a _meadow_, in contradistinction to that land under the plough, or _arable_: this yields meadow-hay if mowed for that purpose, or _pasturage_ when fed off or depastured by our flocks or herds.

The meadow, then, as being fixed, is termed "permanent pasture."

Pasture-herbage, however, is grown in the shifting crops of arable cultivation; in which case it gets the term of "artificial pasture." Hay from the first of these is called "meadow-hay," whilst the mixture of gra.s.ses, clovers, &c., gets the name of "artificial gra.s.s," or "hay," as the case may be.

As regards permanent pasture, this may be _old_ or _new_,-some meadows having been in green herbage even for centuries, whilst others, though sufficiently old, yet show traces of having been once arable in the more or less high-backed ridges left by ancient ploughing. Viewed in this way, original pasture is not so extensive as may be supposed; indeed, there is scarcely such a thing at all, as all pastures are the result of something like cultivation,-as, left to themselves, that is, to Nature, they would soon resume the aspect of jungle, moor, or marsh, according to soil and situation.

Meadows and pastures may, then, for our present purpose, be conveniently tabulated as follows:-

A. PERMANENT PASTURES.

1. _Moors and uplands_, unenclosed or but partially fenced in.

2. _Commons_, unenclosed land, usually about villages, conferring the right of cattle and goose grazing.

3. _River flats_ and lowlands, liable to floods.

4. _Irrigated Meadow_, in which the water is controllable.

5. _Meadows_, or permanent gra.s.s enclosures.

B. ARTIFICIAL PASTURES.

6. _Seeds_, shifting crops of some gra.s.ses, clovers, saintfoin, &c., used either mixed or separately.

1. Moors, uplands, and downs (such as Dartmoor and Salisbury Plain) are more or less wild according to their elevation and the geological formation on which they occur. They consist of large tracts of land either without fences at all, or only those of the most inefficient kind, rather boundary-lines than otherwise. They are never used for haymaking, nor are they cultivated beyond depasturing. These are dotted with patches of rough gra.s.s, thorns, briers, and shrubs or stunted trees where the surface is much broken, and the animals they are made to carry are few; but on the more rounded and smooth lines of the downs is a finer herbage, kept so not only from the nature of the case, but from the fact that such a position favours the more thickly stocking it with that close-grazing animal the sheep.

These pasturages, though very extensive, are yet being encroached upon by a higher cultivation, and the hayfields one occasionally meets with around the squatter's cabin even in the wild mountainous parts of Wales sufficiently testify to the greater productiveness of which the most unfavourable districts are capable.

2. The village common is sometimes extensive; it, too, as the former, is only grazed. Many of them have of late years been enclosed. Where much depastured-and they usually carry as much stock as they can bear-there is a remarkable absence of plants other than gra.s.ses. Indeed, gra.s.s-herbage, and usually of the best species, will prevail, unless in places where there may be stagnant water, in which cases a little drainage would produce a large public benefit; but as what is everybody's business is done by no one, the common is too often left much wilder, and thus made poorer than it need be.