MANAGEMENT OF MEADOWS AND PASTURES. 95 



Let me advise you as one of the most important practical measures 

 that you can adopt, to fill ten or twenty boxes with the soil which 

 you intend to lay down to meadow, and sow each one with a differ- 

 ent kind of grass seed. You will thus ascertain the adaptation of 

 your land to different kinds of grass, and the number of plants each 

 square foot of it is capable of maintaining. 



2d — We should only sow the seeds of (hose grasses which come into 

 flower at the same period. Chemical analysis and practical trials 

 alike concur in showing that hay is most nutritive and most pala- 

 table when cut at the period of flowering ; at this time it contains 

 more sugar, starch, gum and albumin, than at any other; if suffered 

 to stand after this these substances are converted into woody fibre 

 and other compounds which cannot be acted on by the digestive 

 organs, and is therefore valueless. It follows from this, that great 

 loss is sustained by cutting together those grasses which flower at 

 different periods. If cut when the earlier grasses are in good 

 condition, the later ones are watery and innutritious. ' If cut when 

 the later ones are ripe, the valuable constituents of the earlier 

 ones have passed into woody fibre and other insoluable com- 

 pounds. I have for many years been convinced of the wasteful- 

 ness of mixing the grasses which flower at dissimilar periods in the 

 same meadow ; but I was never so thoroughly convinced of it as 

 I have been during the last summer. In many meadows where 

 one-half of the grass has consisted of meadow fescue and Ken- 

 tucky blue grass, which flower in June, has been left absolutely 

 to perish until the timothy had ripened ; and in many cases even 

 the timothy has been suffered to deteriorate seriously in order that 

 the red-top, which is a fortnight later, might have time to ripen. 

 Nothing more strongly marks the utter want of forethought and 

 system in everything pertaining to grass culture, than the almost 

 universal allowance of grasses in the same meadow which cannot 

 be cut at any time without spoiling some of them. 



I have heard some farmers complain that horses and working 

 cattle are apt to scour when fed on hay cut while in blossom. I 

 have never seen this result myself, and in one or two cases where, 

 the complaint has been made, I have satisfied myself that the 

 difficulty has arisen from bad curing, and I have a strong suspicion 

 that if every case could be examined thoroughly it would be found 

 that the scouring was due to this cause rather than to cutting the 

 grass in blossom. 



