A one-year ley for West Highland purposes might well consist of, say, 20 lb. Italian rye-grass, 8 lb. late-flowering red clover and 2 lb. Alsike clover, i.e. 30 lb. weight of seed to the acre. This mixture is sown one season, grazed in the autumn, mown and grazed in the following season, and then—in the West Highlands— ploughed under in the spring a little less than two years after it was originally sown.

It has been a most upsetting thing to me to find that many people in the West do not understand that a one-year mixture of grass and clover does not last as an efficient fodder-producer for a longer time than that. How often have I heard the remark made when looking at a thin, weedy sward devoid of clover—"We got a big crop the first year, but since then it's done very badly"! To go on expecting a crop of grass from a one-year ley is just about as sensible as expecting another crop of oats from a stubble; the only new growth in the next season would be from seed which had been shed from the crop in its yielding year.

The usual practice in British farming is to sow grass seeds in a nurse crop of oats or barley, and this procedure is taken for granted in the West Highlands. It is my belief, however, that we should do much better to sow direct and not in a nurse crop. My reasons for suggesting such an upset in the rotation are these:—

(a) We often suffer a very dry spring which means droughty conditions in the light or thin soils of this countryside, and the grass seeds do not take.

(b) If there is a good "take" the growth in the first season between June and September is considerable, resulting in this good grass and clover having to be

shaken out of the sheaves of corn in order that they may dry. There is a great waste of good feed.

(c) The distressingly usual wet autumn means the stooks are standing on the ground so long that the grass below them is killed, and the crop the following year is marred by empty, weedy patches.

(d) August gales and rain have a habit of laying our corn crops, which in itself means more waste and a great deal of trouble. If this happens much before the corn is cut, large patches of grass and clover are killed.

THE MACHAIR, VATERSAY

The cattle trade of the Uists is founded on the machair. Life without the machair would be poorer. The good short grass is there because of the shell sand thrown up and blown up from the ocean. Shell sand is rich in lime without which good grass cannot be grown nor good stock raised. We cannot create new machair, but in many places in the West we can carry shell sand to our arable ground and make it more fruitful.

There is one quite considerable disadvantage in the practice of sowing a ley direct on to a prepared tilth in June, in that you lose part of a growing season in a countryside where the arable land is strictly limited. The advantages, in my opinion, greatly exceed this loss of part of a growing season, for let it be well understood that you do not lose a whole year by omitting the corn crop.

First, as the Italian rye-grass, late-flowering red and Alsike clovers are sown towards the end of June, when there is a fairly certain expectation of rain in the near future to ensure the germination of the seeds, you have the drier months of the year in which to prepare the ground thoroughly without any feeling of rush. The dry, sunny weather of May and June allows of a second ploughing, of a series of cultivatings and harrow-ings, and a raking off of twitch and gathering of stones. There is even time for the ground to be left a week or two to allow such weeds as charlock and orach to germinate, whereafter you can cultivate and harrow again to kill them. The West Highland year and the inadvisability of autumn and winter ploughing do not give us much time to clean ground other than by this practice of sowing the temporary ley by itself.

Second, the grass and clover comes away quickly after sowing and a fair quantity of feed is present in six weeks' time. Here is a grand piece of grass on which to wean the lambs; it is just right for calves too, and the cows which are now finding the natural herbage going off in quality will revive in milk yield and continue longer into the autumn. Quite apart from the cleaning the ground gets before the seeds are sown, these six weeks of splendid grazing between mid-August and the end of September are something to offset against the loss of a corn crop. Grazing may be continued till November, when the park should be closed and either chain-harrowed or the droppings carefully spread by hand with a graip.

It is essential that the ley should be grazed in the year it is sown, and not mown. The treading of the animals and their dung and urine are a necessary part of the improvement of the ground and of the establishment of the ley to give its maximum yield the following year, when it comes very early and may be made into June hay. As a further gain to offset against the loss of the corn crop there is the very heavy yield which may be expected of the ley treated as I have suggested. After mowing, the ley may be grazed or it may be left to provide a second crop in September, which can be made into silage if the good weather has gone. We may be fairly certain that making silage of grass from temporary leys will be one of our solutions of the winter fodder problem.

Our ley may now be grazed in its second autumn and winter as long as there is anything to be grazed. Ploughing should take place as early in the spring as possible, great care being taken to turn the furrow flat and cover the grass. This ground will be rich in organic matter or humus from the decaying roots of the turf, and the clover will have enriched the soil with nitrogen.

Potatoes would be an excellent crop to follow the ley; or a corn crop may be expected to be heavy, and for this reason a fairly stiff-strawed variety should be chosen.

17. The Two-year Ley

The one-year ley which we have discussed is not only a fodder provider but a first-class land improver, if the ground has been adequately dressed with lime and phosphates. Sowing a one-year mixture is a definite method of intensifying crofting agriculture. It involves outlay, care and hard work if it is to give of its best. If labour is desperately short, a two-year ley will save a certain amount of cultivation and the manurial residue when the grass is turned under will be somewhat greater than from a one-year ley.

One of the arts of agriculture as well as of life in general is to avoid complication. Make for simplicity every time—and nothing could be simpler than that one-year mixture of Italian rye-grass, late-flowering red clover and a dash of Alsike clover. The two-year ley is not so simple, because you are aiming at a big crop in two consecutive years, but you need not indulge in the wild (and often expensive) mixtures which used to appear in the seeds merchants' catalogues. Ask yourself the reason for the inclusion of any particular grass or clover and cut down the varieties rigidly.

Personally, because I am thinking always in terms of raising the level of fertility of our ground, I should prefer my two-year ley to be grazed in the first year and mown for hay or silage in the second; our ground is hungry for the dung and urine of cattle. That first year's grazing, i.e. the year after the mixture is sown, demands Italian rye-grass and broad red clover. We shall need some heavy-yielding grasses and clover for the second year of production, and for this perennial rye-grass and late-flowering red clover will be most important. Cocksfoot is another strong-growing grass which will provide bulk in the second year and occupy the space left by the Italian rye-grass which has by then almost died out.

A good cover or close sward in that second year is most essential, or weeds like docken and sheep sorrel will creep in and make trouble for the future. The red clovers already mentioned are not persistent, and as the grasses we are using are " top " grasses, i.e. making little bottom growth as the permanent meadow grasses do, we must use a white clover with some lasting power. Dutch white clover will provide both bulk and bottom growth in the second year, and a bit of New Zealand wild white clover will creep well among the grasses and provide excellent grazing in the aftermath. The weed-choking power of this latter clover is considerable.

Here, then, is a complete mixture for a two-year ley, sown direct without a nurse crop as previously suggested, grazed the year of sowing and the year after, and mown in its second fully productive year:—16 lb. perennial rye-grass, 4 lb. Italian rye-grass, 6 lb. cocksfoot, 1 lb. broad red clover, 3 lb. late-flowering red clover, 1 lb. Alsike clover, 1 lb. Dutch white clover, 1 lb. New Zealand wild white clover; 33 lb. in all, per acre.

18. Cultivations for Leys

I have advised in the foregoing pages that the grass seeds of temporary ley should be sown direct on to well-prepared ground during the month of June. If the season is still dry, the young seedlings will have a much better chance of survival if there is no cereal crop above them. Such a crop of oats or barley is usually called a "nurse" crop, but it should be remembered this nurse will drink the water in the soil which the young grass seedlings so urgently need.

This matter of water supply is not so important when the seeds are sown direct in June, for a dry July is almost a contradiction in terms in the West Highlands!

Fineness of tilth should be the great aim, together with cleanliness of the ground. A grass or clover seed is a very small thing and the germinating plant much tenderer than the shoot of those perennial grasses which may spring forth from an underground stem.

Fortunately, most of our soil in the West Highlands is easily worked, and a few runs of the cultivator followed by a couple of harrowings will produce a fine tilth during the dry time of late April, May and early June. When the land is dirty, a fortnight's resting time should be allowed between each series of cultivations, because this allows weed seeds time to germinate, and the following disturbance of the soil can kill them. Crofters' leys are usually of small acreage, so in that preliminary spring cleaning period there should be no hesitation about getting down to the job of hand raking and forking to remove couch grass and other root stocks of perennial weeds from the seed bed.

Grass and clover grow best on land in good heart. Any lime, or phosphate such as basic slag, that can be spared should be sown for this crop during the time the ground is being prepared. Neither ground limestone nor slag are likely to burn the seeds if the fertilizers are given a good harrowing-in. Quicklime might quite well be dangerous if sown too near seeding time if the weather were very dry, for the lime would not slake quickly.

The grass seed should be broadcast, preferably using the thumb and first two fingers of both hands. Dividing the seed into two portions and making two runs over the ground at right angles to one another help to ensure even sowing. The seeds should be well mixed again after they are received from the seedsman, as the shiny clover seeds are apt to slip to the bottom of the sack.

Two light harrowings should be enough to cover the seeds after broadcasting, and one or two good rollings will complete the cultivations. Keep an eye open for the appearance of thistles or any unusual weeds and spud them out while it is yet easy to do so.

One final word about sowing a temporary ley. Good grass comes from good seeds and not from the floor sweepings of the hay barn. It is always worth while to get your seed from a reliable firm and not to be attracted by undue cheapness. Grass is one of the most important crops we grow in the West Highlands.

19. Meadow Hay

A friend from the South and myself were sitting on one side of a sea loch looking across to the patchwork of growing crops of a crofting township two miles away.

"How is it," he asked, "that in July there are those large pieces of uncropped ground in course of cultivation?"

I looked across to the brown stretches which at this distance looked much like the early potato lands of Ayrshire just before the ridges are drawn in March.

"The point is," I said, "that you are not looking at bare earth at all, but at parks of meadow hay, uncut as yet."

"But meadow hay isn't dark reddish brown in colour?"

"You mean it shouldn't be. What we are seeing over there is the massed flower heads of Yorkshire Fog."

CROFTING AT ARDVASAR, SKYE

It appears to be haytime in a fenced township. Some of the hay is in large quoils, some in small quoils, some lying in the swathe and some uncut. Tripods in the middle distance indicate that the big quoils are being made with air space inside them. They would dry even better if they were lifted clear of the ground.

This township has obviously shrunk since the days when much of the ground behind the crofts was cultivated. The lazy-beds evidently supported a large population, for all those acres of feannagan in the photograph represent hand labour.

And I pulled a stalk from near me and showed what this poor grass looked like at close quarters. The leaves are soft and downy ; the stalk is downy too, and the flower head is soft and fluffy and goes a browny purple colour as it ripens. The grass does not stand firm to the scythe and is apt to form a light mat on the herbage floor.

Yorkshire Fog is considered a weed grass on all good land, where it is known to increase in old meadows. On upland grazings it is not to be despised as an alternative to bents and sedges. But in a countryside like the West Highlands which could grow grass as well as any other part of Britain, and where the amount of enclosed and arable ground is so small, it is sheer waste of space and cultivation to put up with meadow land which contains little else but Yorkshire Fog and gives a hay crop of indifferent quality, weighing only a ton or thereabouts to the acre.

If we closely examine these patches of old meadow ground we find often enough that there are other plants growing, but many of them are weeds. Sorrel is one, a member of the docken family, and is a sure sign of lack of lime. Then there is yellow rattle, a stiff-stalked weed with saw-edged pointed leaves, and with a yellow flower carrying a sort of green bladder immediately below it. When this weed is ripe the bladder becomes hard and papery and you can hear the seeds rattling inside. Look carefully where the yellow rattle is thickest, and you will see the total crop of grass in that place is lower in quantity than elsewhere. Why should this be?

Pull up a plant of yellow rattle by taking hold of it well down the stem. You will find it comes away quite easily and that the root is a very small affair unlike ordinary roots. The reason is that yellow rattle does not work for its living as hard as other plants do; it is a parasite, fastening its short roots on to those of the grass and living on the sustenance the grass has gathered from the soil. Obviously the grass cannot make the growth if it has to carry the yellow rattle as well.

The easiest remedy to check this annual parasitic weed is to graze the ground for a year or two, but the cure is only partial and does not improve the ground much. The best cure is ploughing—-but more about that later on. Other plants of the same family as the yellow rattle which are common in poor grassland are red rattle, a plant with a smaller red flower and branched from near the foot instead of having one single stalk like yellow rattle, and eyebright, a small white flower which grows freely among heather and sedge. All are parasitical plants and not to be encouraged.

If meadow land is in good order, that is, not only yielding well but free from bad grasses and such weeds as dockens, thistles, rattles, ragworts and sorrel, it is better to keep it as meadow ground and not pasture it in alternate years. It is possible by careful manuring to develop leafy top grasses which give a good bulk of hay of kinder type than seeds hay. Also, permanent grass usually contains a good variety of plants which seeds hay does not, and some of these non-grassy plants, like burnet and rib-grass, are much relished by the cattle in winter and make a definite contribution to the diet.

It stands to reason that meadow land will not stand up to a hay crop being taken off each year and having the aftermath grazed by cows and young stock without having a considerable amount put back into it. Meadow ground needs a good dressing of farmyard manure every season, say 10 tons to the acre, to keep it going, but the unfortunate fact is that we never have enough dung to do this. The next best thing is to dung the meadow as heavily as can be spared every three years, give a dressing of 10 cwt. of basic slag every three to five years, 2 tons of ground limestone every five years, and 1 cwt. of some nitrogenous fertilizer, such as nitro-chalk, sulphate of ammonia or nitrate of soda in spring every year the ground is not dunged. Where meadow land is on the machair, liming can be cut out for the most part, but let no one make the mistake of thinking that if grass is growing from soil on a base of limestone or shell-sand it must necessarily contain plenty of lime. Lime tends to sink in the soil, and I know from my own experience that a lime requirement of 2 tons to the acre is quite common for soil lying on solid limestone rock. Seaweed is an excellent manure for meadow land. The potash of seaweed is particularly valuable if the soil is light. But remember that the constant use of seaweed demands the application of lime and phosphates to keep the balance of the soil right.

Meadow land in good order should be cut early so that weeds of the kind mentioned above do not have a chance to seed. The aftermath should be closely grazed, but the land should not be heavily grazed in early spring, for not only will the immediate hay crop be much lessened but the better grasses will tend to die out. Where chain or spike harrows are available they should be freely used on the meadow ground. Chain harrows keep the manure spread during the time the land is being grazed and prevent tufty unequal growth. Both chain and spike harrows help to pull out the moss which tends to grow in winter. Finally, a good rolling will do meadow ground a lot of good, especially on light soil. If the ground has been heavily grazed the rolling flattens out the hoof marks and makes mowing easier, and if it has not been grazed, the rolling is necessary for consolidation.

20. Permanent Pasture

Permanent pasture is a term covering a multitude of conditions, varying from an enclosed ploughable park of the best grasses and clovers to a bare hill grazing of heather, sedges and white grass in which clover is absent. Grazing paddocks of the first kind are practically unknown in the Highlands, but there are, nevertheless, many parks of indifferent grass into which the plough could be taken. Such grass is losing money at the present time, for it is late to come in spring, early to collapse in autumn, and during its flush season the weight and character of the herbage are poor. It is such parks which have come in most largely for the plough-up campaign and many are the troubles which have been encountered.

Much of this sort of land will go down again almost immediately to permanent pasture, but it should greatly benefit from this wartime ploughing. Turn it over as flat as possible, do not work it except by light harrows if there is a rubbery mat, sow lime and basic slag generously ; harrow in, sow the oat crop and sit back and think for a while.

Your thoughts might be on these lines.

That ground was hard on man and beast, getting it turned under, and it seems a pretty tough turf to get rotted down—interspersed as it was with a bit of heather at the top end under the hill, some bracken on the dry spots and rushes in the hollows. We are all right just now with the young corn showing well and the wire-worms still busy with the original turf, but what happens next year?

From personal experience I can say you are in for a gruelling time. That old rubbery mat of turf does not rot down in one year, and though you will probably take off an excellent corn crop, the ground in autumn and winter appears dirty and very rough. When you come to plough in the spring you find yourself either precisely turning back last year's unrotted furrow slices or getting bogged trying to split them or go deeper or plough crossways. If both the man and the horses manage to stay the course, another corn crop may be tried, but it comes up weedy in the extreme and the wireworms now turn their attention to it. In fact, it is a failure.

My advice in these particular instances would be to sow down a one-year grass mixture in that first corn crop after ploughing. This procedure, you may say, is contrary to that which I have been advising heretofore in sowing down a temporary ley. The point is that this one-year ley is not an end in itself, but a stop-gap to save having empty ground the year after ploughing this marginal type of land. This mixture can be grazed after the corn crop is off, for the treading and the dung and urine will help a great deal towards rotting down the mat. The surface may be too rough for the mixture to be mown for hay the following summer, in which case it should be grazed heavily and the dung kept spread with harrows or graip.

Ploughing should take place as early as possible in the second spring : the rubbery mat will have rotted and it should be possible to give the ground a thorough working through the drier spring months so that it may present a clean seed bed and fine tilth for the reception of a permanent grass mixture. After-treatment would be the same as that given already for temporary leys, but the mixture itself will need special thought.

There are two ways of putting land down to permanent grass or long ley; one is to let it fall down by natural seeding and spreading the sweepings of the byre loft; the other is to lay it down by choosing the mixture of grasses and clovers to be sown with the utmost care. Many a man intends to follow the latter course, but lack of knowledge of different kinds and strains of grasses prevents him reaching the goal of a fine close sward which comes early in spring and holds out far into autumn. And it can scarcely be over-emphasized that poor ground will not produce good grass, nor will poor management maintain good grass. Let us get that notion firmly in our heads that grass should be our principal crop in the West Highlands.

One of the outstanding developments of recent years in grassland research has been the selection of particular strains of certain grasses and clovers for particular jobs. Leafy strains of grasses from good old pastures have shown much greater sureness and productivity than their commercial counterparts, and their value is so pronounced that it is now realized that the strain of a grass may be more important than the kind or species. Much of the work of selecting these strains was done at Sir George Stapledon's agricultural research centre at Aberystwyth, and on a Welsh hill farm outside the town. These strains are now coming into the market for commercial mixtures, but a buyer would need to specify their inclusion and the cost of the mixture would be fairly high.

I said on an earlier page that simplicity in a seeds mixture was a great virtue, but that the longer the ley the more complicated the mixture would be. All the same, simplicity is the keynote and it is remarkable nowadays how few kinds really need to be included, because some less important species will come in anyway by natural seeding.

Perennial rye-grass, cocksfoot and wild white clover are the main constituents we should like to see in our finished pasture. If 1 lb. of wild white clover seed appears but a small proportion in a mixture of over 30 lb. to the acre, remember that the seeds are very small and that the spreading habit of this plant is extraordinary if the lime and phosphate balance of the soil is right. These three constituents will not make their full growth until the second or third year, so a proportion of temporary grasses and clovers to fill the ground soon after sowing is necessary. Some timothy would be a useful addition on ground which does not dry out, for it bulks up the crop, and some rough-stalked meadow-grass would help the bottom growth, for it does well in districts of high rainfall. Here, then, is a sound mixture for a permanent ley: 14 lb. perennial rye-grass, 10 lb. cocksfoot, 4 lb. timothy, 1 lb. rough-stalked meadow-grass, 4 lb. late-flowering red clover, 1 lb. Alsike clover, and 1 lb wild white clover—total, 35 lb. per acre.

The best strain of perennial rye-grass for pastures is that known as S. 23, and the S. 143 cocksfoot is excellent. The S. 48 timothy is more leafy than the usual commercial seed. It should be remembered that white clover and wild white clover are two different plants. Only wild white will be persistent in the pasture and increase by creeping. White clover is often called Dutch white and does not last more than two or three years. It is much better left out of mixtures for the West.

There is that type of ground which overlies shingle, such as you might get at the junction of a river coming at right angles into a sea loch. Such ground, if ploughed, would drain so quickly that crops would dry out easily and it would be a hard job to keep sufficient humus in it. The skin of turf is its salvation and you cannot afford to lose that skin. Yet you wish to improve it: the best thing is to go over the ground several times in early spring with the disc harrows and cut the turf about thoroughly. Then sow the seeds mixture, but you will not be able to go over the ground with light seeds harrows afterwards. It could be disced again, however, with the discs set parallel to the draft, and then well rolled.

21. Hill Pasture

There is no doubt that some hill ground in the West Highlands and Islands is capable of being improved by a process of burning and reseeding after the surface of the ground has been torn about by some such implement as a disc harrow or pitch-pole harrow drawn by a track-laying tractor. But the plain facts are that in the first place we have not got those implements and tractors—nor could we get them now—and secondly, there is a good deal more hill grazing which would defeat any known mechanical device. When all this is admitted, we must not sit back and say, "There you are—that's the position; there's nothing to be done about it." Our aim should be to develop ingenuity to reach goals by other means than the mechanical. The man who puts some strong rough bullocks on to an enclosure bearing a mat of poor grass and, not thinking first of their condition, leaves them on it long enough to tear off the mat and tread the ground, is using those animals as implements. They are not mechanical, but biological implements.

It would be a grand thing if grazing committees of townships could begin on the common grazing immediately outside the crofts. An improved stock-carrying capacity on those few hundred acres would greatly ease the pressure on winter keep, and improved pasture means better health of stock and greater persistence of milk production into the winter months.

MINGULAY

This, I think, is the only depressing photograph in this book. It is a picture of a failure. The human population of Mingulay left the island in 1910. After the immense labour of creating these acres of cultivable ground, clearing the stones to demarcate the crofts, and tilling it all by-hand labour, life became too difficult in a changing time. A shepherd's cottage of modern type looks an incongruity here; but throughout the West we find that the sheep and their owners of to-day are gathering benefit from the toil of patient cultivators of a past age. It is on these old crofting lands that we should pay some tribute to the men and women of the past by carrying out reseeding with good grass mixture and putting down more cattle on the new grazing.

We should make a mental survey of what constitutes our own common grazings. If there is dry moor of good heather, it is worth keeping as such, for both cattle and sheep are the better for some heather in the winter months. Unfortunately, good heather is not plentiful enough in the West ; the peat is too wet and grows a sour sedge. Areas of draw-moss or sheathed cotton grass are also best left alone, because this plant comes earlier than any grass and is much liked by the sheep in February and March.

What of the stretches of white grass and flying bent ? The present system is to burn these frequently and be satisfied with the bite of new growth each early summer before the grass runs ahead of the stock and forms the mat which is burnt in spring. It is these areas upon which we should concentrate for preliminary improvement. Liming should take place immediately after burning : ground limestone at the rate of 2 tons to the acre, or shell-sand in as heavy dressings as possible up to 10 tons to the acre. Shell-sand would be the preferable form of lime to be applied if it can be obtained near at hand by a squad of men from the township. Its cost would be a small fraction of that of ground limestone which is a processed material coming from afar. A certain quantity of ground limestone in bags is being allocated for use in West Highland townships at a cost of £4, 10s. a ton, which means £2, 5s. after the subsidy has been paid. I reckon that in places where shell-sand is to be got, it can be put down on a shore from which carts could take it at a cost of from 7s. 6d. to 15s. a ton, a squad of crofters paying themselves 1s. 6d. an hour for the work. If the sand is analysed first and leave given by the Land Fertility Committee, all shell-sand so applied would be eligible for the 50 per cent. subsidy. Thus the men of a township could give themselves part-time work and greatly improve the grazing conditions. A net cost of 5s. or 7s. 6d. a ton as compared with £2, 5s. is worth consideration. [Since writing the above, more crushing plants have come into operation to make available the local limestone of the Highlands. The price at the quarry varies from 29s. to 37s. 6d. a ton, subject to the 50 per cent. subsidy.]

If it is possible to plough or disc-harrow portions of rough grazing it is well worth doing so. The liming should follow the ploughing, and because the land is ploughed, it would be legal at present to apply basic slag or ground mineral phosphate to the ground at the rate of 15 cwt. per acre. It is unfortunate that the present phosphate position does not allow of basic slag being applied to permanent grassland or rough pasture, though it is possible that if township committees actively put forward a scheme of improvement of common grazings, an allocation of slag might be made, because of the special deficiency of phosphates in the West. One thing is certain, it is for the committees to act first in showing a positive will and intention to improve their grazings.

Assuming that some bits of the grazing are ploughable and have been disc-harrowed, surface drained, limed and slagged, the next task is to sow what is called a regenerating mixture containing wild white clover. Much of the value of applying phosphates would be lost unless wild white clover was sown afterwards. Our western grazings are so poor that we should not attempt to make up an expensive regenerating mixture, but rely on seed cleanings from the threshings of wild white clover and permanent grass seeds, applied at the rate of about 84 lb. an acre. These cleanings cost about 5s. a cwt. before the war, but would be two or three times that price now. Even so, they are cheap.

The seeds would be best sown at the end of June or early July when fairly constant rainfall could be expected.

The ground should be rolled and dressed with 1¼ cwt. of nitro-chalk to help the seeds to come away after they have germinated. A few patches of such regenerated rough grazing—say a total of 10 acres per 1000 to begin with—would be a great help to the cow stock and the ewes and lambs. We can scarcely hope to improve a whole hill grazing, but the establishment of good patches has been found highly successful ; an upward tendency in fertility is begun and by subsequent attention to slagging and liming, and controlling the grazing by skilful shepherding, the patches of improved ground tend to grow larger.

It is perhaps unnecessary to point out that regeneration in hill grazing should not be of one large patch. When I said 10 acres per 1000, I had in mind ten patches of an acre each rather than one of 10 acres. The more that can be done, the better, of course; but experience shows that one large patch tends to get punished by the sheep, which will almost starve themselves before they will go on to other ground. It is also found that by concentrating the sheep on such a patch there arises a large increase in intestinal worms in the sheep stock. Hill sheep are always the better of being well spread about.

I know all too well the tribulations of improving hill ground where no implement can go. The process here is to burn hard in March, then apply the lime and slag or mineral phosphate. The first plant to grow will be tormentil, a tiny yellow creeping flower with five petals, but it will not cover the ground in the first season. The seed cleanings should be sown in July and left to take their chance. No text book or bulletin on grassland improvement will recommend such a course as sowing the seed without any cultivation; I should not have the courage to do so myself had I not undertaken the experiment on my own ground and found it not only possible but successful. Some wild white clover came in naturally, but the strains from the seed cleanings are recognizable and have produced more top growth. The grasses in the mixture came too. My whole experiment was helped by the natural incoming of yellow horseshoe vetch which makes an excellent forerunner to the clover. Some attempt should be made to graze the regenerated ground only lightly in the first season.

When we get higher up the hill where there is little chance ever of carrying lime and slag, we should not neglect the benefit which can come from flushing—that is, making use of the water which gushes up from rock far below ground. These flush waters contain lime and other mineral salts which can be spread over the ground by leading the water over the surface along a small open drain. The drain can be lengthened every fortnight or so to allow a bit of new ground to be treated. This practice was common in the nineteenth century, but increases in the cost of labour have prevented its continuation with the regularity it deserves. Crofters, however, are largely their own masters, and flushing could be done co-operatively on a high common grazing.

22. Moor Burning

In March and April we expect a dry spell sometime, and many a man's hand will be feeling for his matchbox as he goes about the hill, setting light to patches of white grass or burning a moor of old heather. The good shepherd rarely burns on his own, it is far too dangerous a practice, and most certainly there is no need for crofters with a common grazing to burn any part of it without a sufficiency of men and proper organization. If there is one thing above another which upsets me in the management of West Highland rough grazings, it is the irresponsibility with which moor burning is conducted. Let us hope we shall never see repeated some of the disastrous burning which took place in the springs of 1941 and 1942, when Scotland burnt from coast to coast and many a stretch of young timber with it.

A controlled system of rotational burning is a valuable means of increasing the carrying capacity or productivity of a heather moor. Sheep farming, as it is understood in the Borders, Lanarkshire and the eastern Highlands, would be impossible without this means of getting young heather. The high density of grouse on a moor is also dependent on burning. But, let me repeat, owners of such moors, whose money is got from rents for sheep farming and grouse shooting, would never allow the burning to be a haphazard affair. A proprietor was always present himself in the old days when burning was to be done, or he sent his factor, and even now many leases of sheep farms stipulate that a representative of the proprietor shall be present at that time.

Now we in the West have not got heather moors such as we see in the Borders or east of the Spey. We have a much weaker plant of heather striving to keep going in a mass of sedges and bents. The reason for this is that our peat does not drain anything like so easily as that of the East and South, and we get a much higher rainfall. Heather does not like wet ground at all, and grows best on a relatively thin layer of peat overlying a stratum of sand or glacial silt, or on deep peat where there are good channels draining the upper foot or two. Where the plant is strong, it regenerates quickly and effectually crowds out other growth. Here in the West, heather comes back slowly after severe burning, and at the present time we can say that burning is one of the surest ways to spread bracken. I often see stretches of hillside where the area of bracken follows precisely the lines of an earlier burning.

It is necessary to maintain a burning rotation if a grazing is to be kept in order, and in the West that rotation should be one of from fifteen to twenty years. The areas burnt should not be too small or the sheep will punish the young heather too hard in the early years of regeneration. After all, even with a twenty-year rotation, the actual burning could take place every two years, so that the strips were of reasonable size.

A sufficient squad of men should be mustered for this job ; it is not good enough for a man to set light to a bit of white grass and trust that the fire will not run. Burning should proceed upwind so that old heather is completely burnt and does not leave birns to pull the wool off the sheep. And it should be done early in the season, not at the end of April and into May when new growth has already started and birds are nesting. Our western common grazings do not suffer from being under snow in March as many inland moors are, and as the first three weeks of March are usually one of our driest times, there is little excuse for not getting on the job early.

Care should be taken to save from burning the occasional clumps of birches, willows or rowans which occur about a grazing, for these provide valuable cover and shelter of which our western moors are often deficient. "Better a wee bush than nae bield." Even whin bushes would be better kept low with a billhook than just burnt when they get straggly, for the low young growth is good feed for both cattle and sheep. The successful management of a grazing is essentially a co-operative affair.

HAYMAKING, LOCH TORRIDON

Here is soft meadow hay being made into foot quoils on ground which I can see bears signs of old cas-ckrom cultivation. The work of generations has piled the stones which must have littered the ground as badly as we see them in the garden piece. My inclination would be to use those piles of stones as bottoms for quoils of hay. The grass would dry quicker for being well off the ground. This is country, also, where fence drying for hay would be useful, because the wind is not bad here but the rainfall is high. From the look of the weather over the loch we must hinder our friend no longer from her quoiling.