92 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



some respectable agricultural journal, we shall soon have a mass 

 of reliable and accurate facts in relation to this matter such as has 

 never yet been brought together ; practical men will then have 

 some reliable guidance, and will not be obliged to grope in the 

 dark about their grass culture as. they have hitherto been com- 

 pelled to do. You must remember however, that your statements 

 if they are to be useful must distinguish the plants by their botanical 

 names ; there is so much confusion in the trivial names that their 

 use will lead inevitably to the most serious errors in practice; thus 

 some half dozen species are known in different localities by the 

 single name of June grass, as many more are called blue grass, a 

 number more are called spear grass, another number are called 

 reed grass, &c, hence a man in one section of the country writing 

 his experience of June grass or blue grass or spear grass will 

 greviously mislead a farmer in another section who knows an 

 entirely different plant, having different habits and requirements 

 by that name. / 



I must again repeat that I know very little of those matters 

 respecting grass culture which it is all important that you as 

 farmers should understand, but the little that I have to tell you 

 that is both reliable and useful I now proceed to unfold. 



1st — It appears that (he grasses, which in the present state of our 

 knowledge are the most useful and the most profitable, seem to flourish 

 best when the opposite extremes of wetness and dryness are avoided. 

 Very careful counting in a great number of meadows give the 

 following results. In ivet meadows, out of thirty plants, four were 

 useful and twenty-six were useless, that is, they were weeds. In 

 dry meadows, out of thirty-eight plants, eight were useful and 

 thirty were useless. In moist meadows out of forty-two plants, 

 seventeen were useful and twenty-five useless. 



2nd — In a rough classification of soils into upland thin soils, 

 poor clay, rich loams, flooded meadows, and irrigated meadows, the 

 following figures which give the average of a great number of 

 careful observations will show the relative values of each kind of 

 soil. The "upland thin soils" were in all cases the poorest grass 

 lands, the "poor clays" gave 50 per cent., the "red loams" 150 

 percent., the "flooded meadows" 250 per cent., and the " irri- 

 gated meadows " 400 per cent, more than the " upland thin soils." 



3d — The soil which seems best adapted to the production of our 

 best grasses is a strong, deep calcareous soil resting on a clayey 

 subsoil. On such a soil, we may be sure of an abundant vegetation 



