OF SCOTLAND.

533

PART Y.

OF ARTICLES PRINCIPALLY CULTIVATED FOR THEIR 'LEAVES AND STEMS.

4

SECT. I.

OF RYE-GRASS AND CLOVERS, INCLUDING THE PRACTICEOF SOILING.

§ 1. Introductory observations on their cultivation —Thecultivation of artificial or sown grasses for hay, soiling, andpasture, has been already considered as a prominent featurein the improved or alternate husbandry of Scotland , thesebeing always sown by judicious husbandmen when the soil isin its highest state of tilth and fertility. In other words, rye-grass and clover, are uniformly sown with the first grain cropwhich succeeds a well wrought and manured fallow or turnipcrop, or at least as near as may be, in the various rotationsor courses of crops already pointed out in the third part ofthis chapter.

This essential character of the alternate or convertible hus-bandry, is diametrically opposite to the exploded old system,-if such it may be called, in which crops of grain were persist-ed in so long as they continued to yield a little more than de-frayed the expence of seed and labour. When the soil, bythis injurious treatment, was exhausted almost to a caputmortuum, fouled by a legion of weeds, and incapable of pro-ducing any more grain, it was then allowed to rest, that itmight gather heart, as it was called ; during which period, itbecame fully stocked with weeds and natural grasses; in which