ON THE AHABLE LAND

•SS*

state it remained, till a series of years of miserable pasture, re-stored it to some degree of fertility, when it was again brokenup to grow a few scanty crops of grain. Such was the wretch-ed management of the outfield land in all the arable districtsof Scotland ; and on these only was there any herbage allona-ed to grow for pasture, except on uncultivated moors andcommons ; as the infield land, to which all the farm muckwas exclusively devoted, was every year's land , and made togrow grain crops in perpetuity.

Under such wretched management, every species of im-provement that could be devised, such as liming, marling, pa-ring and burning, fallow, folding, draining, and so forth, wereonly stimulants of temporary fertility, which left the soil ulti-mately deteriorated. But the introduction of cultivated her-bage, and the growing experience of its excellent and perma-nent effects, have taught all observant husbandmen, that thetrue arcanum of profitable husbandry is, to increase and to pre-serve the fertility of the soil by every possible means, and ne-ver to strain nnd exhaust its vigour and fertility by overcrop-ping.

In treating of cultivated herbage, or mixed rye-grass andclovers, it is proposed to consider them under three severalviews, as adapted for hay, soiling, and pasture. But beforeadverting to these in a particular manner, some general ob-servations may be premised, on the manner in which the seedsof cultivated herbage are deposited in the soil.

The stages of the several rotations in which rye-grass andclover are introduced, have been already pointed out; and asthe preparation of the soil belongs entirely to the grain cropsalong with which they are usually sown, neither of these cir-cumstances require to be repeated # . These seeds are sownindiscriminately with or among wheat, barley, and oats, butuniformly in the spring season. Hence, when with winter

* Grass seeds, however, arc sometimes sown by themselves and without anygrain crop. '