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Circular No. I. X^ O > ^O -^ ' \ 



United States Department of^ncnU^iiie^ 



DIVISION OF AGROSTOLOGY. 



A NOTE ON EXPERIMENTAL GRASS (URDENS. 



There are some seven hundred distinct kinds of grass native to the 

 United States. This is 20 i)er cent of the whole number known 

 throughout the world. North America, from the southern boundary of 

 Mexico to the Arctic Ocean, has about one-third the total number of 

 known species. The grasses are the most important family of plants, 

 since they provide food for man and forage for cattle. Wheat, corn, oats, 

 rice, sugar cane, sorghum, and tiie bamboo which represents house and 

 furniture to so many millions of people in oriental countries — these 

 and many more are grasses. All of our grains the world over are grass 

 products. Besides what we ourselves eat, most of the fodder and 

 pasturage of our flocks and herds, and the pasturage for the wild game 

 is provided by the many species of our prairies, valleys, and moimtains. 



Next in importance to the grass family is the bean family. All of 

 our cultivated clovers and their relatives — red clover, alfalfa, cowpeas, 

 and the multitude of less known forage plants — belong to the l)ean 

 family. There are about eight hundred members of thft bean family in 

 the United States, not counting the trees. These seven hundred 

 grasses and eight hundred legumes together form one of the richest 

 legacies of our country. 



The amount of money invested in the cattle industry is reckoned 

 by the hundred million dollars, and every dollar of that value is 

 absolutely dependent ui)on the question of forage. Strip ^ our broad 

 acres of their grasses and clovers, and instead of receiving millions of 

 dollars for the meat products sent to foreign lands, we would have to 

 pay out money for them. The cattle industry and the wool industry 

 are dependent upon the question of grass. 



Twenty years ago the whole prairie region west of the Missouri was 

 given over to great herds of cattle, liut the days of the cattle kings 

 are past, and the lands that were then cattle ranges given up to the sup- 

 port of a few head to the square mile, are now divided up into farms. 

 The native Western grasses are being rapidly driven out to make way 

 for the worthless weeds that civilization and scanty cultivation bring 

 with them. Already the buffalo grass and the mes(iuite have dis- 

 appeared from a large section of Kansas and Nebraska. Acres that 

 were once covered with these most nutritious species are now occupied 

 by weedy kinds, and their value as ]iasture and hay lands is constantly 

 diminishing Similar destruction of grasses has followed the cultiva- 

 tion of cotton in the South, and of tobacco and hoed crops generally in 



