The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1884-05-10 00:00:00

THE AGRICULTURAL OUTLOOK.

Under the above heading the Daily Telegraph has
an article, from which we extract the following:
The weather of late has been ungenial and stormy.
The rains, however, have proved exceedingly bene-
ficial to grass lands, but a warmer temperature is now
urgently required to improve the situation. Not only
would pastures contract a deeper and more luxuriant
hue and become rapidly clothed with abundant
herbage, but the wheat plant, the young spring corn,
and all green crops would respond gratefully to a
kindlier touch of Nature, if we could only have
genuine May breezes instead of these cold blighting
winds, a higher temperature, and settled sunny skies.
As yet the favourable agricultural outlook for a
fruitful year has not materially changed on the lighter
and medium class soils; but the season has not proved
quite what clay land occupiers could have desired. Even
the dry weather in March, so highly prized by the bulk
of arable farmers for tillage purposes, did not suit them
the fact being that, owing to the want of frosts in
winter, their lands turned up "leathery," readily
baking into hard clods, which refused to crumble
beneath either harrow or roller until the late spring
rains came to soften them. This made sowings of
Lent corn on such soils rather late, and their occu-
piers are now busily employed in putting in the mangel
wurzel crop. Nor does wheat on the stiffer soils ex-
hibit at all a similar luxuriant and promising ap-
pearance to its general aspect elsewhere. Arable
farms in stiff clay districts depend so much on
weather and seasons, and are so frequently damaged
in their prospects should not these turn out
exactly what they require that, considering
the heavy expenses of tillage which they entail
and the prevailing low prices of corn produce, no
other conclusions can be arrived at than that still
larger acreages of them should be laid down to grass.
The Board of Trade Returns show to what a wide
extent conversion of arable to pasture has been already
effected, but should the market prices of wheat con-
tinue at the low average of from 375. to 38s. per
wafter, which it has not exceeded for several months
past, there will likely be wholesale conversions on a
still broader scale by tenant farmers abandoning their
holdings, and landlords, with such forsaken holdings
thrown on their hands, finding it to be a pure matter
of necessity to convert them to grass for cattle or
sheep runs.
Some of these neglected, cold, stiff clay lands have
been allowed to lay themselves down, or, in other
words, in defect of cultivation or proper seeds
being sown, Nature has covered them with a
garment of weeds and of native wild grasses of
the district. Strange to say, Sir J. B. Lawes,
about two years since, recommended the owners
of such neglected lands to refrain from cleaning
their fields when subject to this condition, on the
ground that if the coarse wild herbage were fed
by stock bountifully supplied with oilcake or other
artificial foods, the rich manurial character
oI Lne Uruppiuga -cyf
fed would very soon cause perennial clovers,
trefoil, and some other of the better grasses to spring
up of their own accord, and thus the heavy expenses
and labour of cleaning and seeding might be
saved, and yet a tolerably good pasture might be
secured in the course of a few years. Mr. Faunce de
Laune, of Sharsted Court, Kent, who has laid down
over 800 acres of his own land to grass during
the past eight or nine years, states, in opposition to
this view, that, althougn the heavy cleansing expenses
might perhaps be saved, the best seeds ought, never-
theless, to be sown—not of the finer meadow grasses,
but those which are stout in stalks and blades as well
as very robust in constitution, while still more nutri-
tive in property than those termed the finest meadow
grasses. There are four peculiarly well adapted to
meet not only the exigencies of the situation in ques-
tion, but to be made a great deal more use of than
they have been in the conversion of arable to
grass—namely, cocksfoot, foxtail, meadow fescue,
and catstail or timothy, and a fifth may, perhaps, be
advantageously added in giant fescue. The greater
part of the pastures on the estate just alluded to were
laid down in scrupulously clean condition, all rootlets
of weeds and wild grasses having previously been
extirpated or killed. But an impoverished small
farm having been taken off the hands of an outgoing
tenant two years since, a test was applied on the prin-
ciple already glanced at, seeds of the strong-growing,
nutritive, high-class meadow grasses mentioned above
having been sown without any expense of cleaning
having been entailed. The result up to the present
has proved a decided success. The young pas-
tures, although not so good as those which
were previously cleaned, are superior to
the average of those usually meeting the eye
in a general point of view; for if must be
acknowledged that there is nothing British agricul-
ture is so backward in as the proper management of
grass lands, and especially the formation and estab-
lishment of superior new pastures. The common
evil almost generally experienced appears to be that
after the conversion has been effected the grass plants
fail so much after the third or fourth years, leaving
the fields in a state of infertility for at least a decade
subsequently, that a serious sacrifice of productive-
ness is commonly entailed. The peculiar value of
Mr. Faunce de Laune's experience is to show that
this may be entirely obviated by scrupulous care in
adopting none but the right kind of seeds and
better management in liberally manuring the young
pastures. He is of opinion that the true reason
of the giving out of pastures at so early a period
must be considered referable to the large proportion
of biennial instead of perennial plants seeded for in
the first instance. He thinks it wrong to sow rye-
grass of any kind, not even excepting those that lay
claim to perennial character; and many seed samples
coming from abroad are subject to so much adultera-
tion that farmers can scarcely deem themselves safe
in perfect assurance as to what they sow unless
samples of the seeds they have purchased, after being
guaranteed, have been submitted to a competent
analyst. The matter is highly important, and by
commsn confession well worthy of far more attentive
Consideration than it has hitherto received.