134 BIOLOGICAL PROBLEMS 



poorest sandy soils where almost everything else fails. 

 I have seen large flocks of sheep on fields sown with 

 Rib-grass doing excellently in dry parched seasons 

 when adjoining fields have been almost devoid of 

 herbage. Rib - grass, however, does not produce 

 enough leaf in proportion to its hard flowering stems, 

 and it also produces excessive amounts of seed, neither 

 seed nor stems being eaten by stock. Cannot these 

 defects be bred out of Rib-grass? 



I now come to the last point that I wish to discuss 

 in connection with the relative value of a ley and old 

 permanent grass, and that is the rival merits of the 

 hay. Meadow hay is held in high esteem by farmers, 

 especially for animals doing hard work or in illness. 

 The value of meadow hay undoubtedly turns upon its 

 complexity. It consists of the herbage from innumer- 

 able species, some of which will be more mature than 

 others at the time of cutting, and all of which will 

 have different coefficients of digestibility and nutritive 

 value. The bulk will, therefore, form a more or less 

 blended and well-balanced ration, being, as it is, the 

 product of metabolic processes in various stages of 

 completion, as well as of a number of species with 

 inherently different ultimate chemical properties. 

 Meadow hay is, in short, the "bread-and-butter" of 

 feeding-stuffs; it has excellent feeding value. Excess 

 of the one can be given to an animal and excess of 

 the other to a child, and neither child nor animal 

 can do itself much harm. Both feeding-stuffs are in 

 fact " fool proof", and require no great skill or know- 

 ledge in their use. 



Ley, or Seeds Hay as it is generally called, is in 

 practice far from well balanced, the clovers making 

 it excessively nitrogenous relative to meadow hay, 

 and the number of gramineous species is generally 

 few. It has therefore, in the economy of the farm, to 



