200 BOARD OP AGRICULTURE. 



the total amount' of vegetable matter organized is much greater 

 in case of clover than in that of wheat, as appears from the. table 

 on page 195, where clover roots are seen to constitute two-fifths 

 (equal to six-fifteenths) of the entire plant, while the roots of rye, 

 which doubtless do not differ much from tfcose of wheat, are but 

 one-fifteenth of the entire plant. 



You see that the foliage and mode of life of these two classes of 

 plants are very different for the purposes of gathering food from 

 the atmosphere, and they must therefore be expected to leave the 

 Boil in a very different condition,. because their roots remain there, 

 and the material of those roots is gathered very largely from the 

 atmosphere ; so that when we raise a grain crop we leave in the 

 soil a small quantity of material taken from the air, but when we 

 cultivate a deep-rooted plant which grows the season through, we 

 leave a large amount of atmospheric matter in the soil. 



Again, in ordinary culture some plants are permitted and 

 required to reach a crisis of growth which others are not allowed 

 to attain. This crisis is seed-production. 



Our meadow grasses are of the same botanical order as the 

 ce 'eal grains ; which means that all these plants are of the same 

 great race and closely resemble each other in their most charac- 

 teristic features. The noble wheat and the scoundrel quack are, 

 in fact, brothers of the same family, both being of the genus Trit- 

 icum. The latter is sometimes termed wheat-grass, as if in allu- 

 sion to this brotherhood. There are two other grasses, vagabond 

 members of the wheat family, living obscurely in this country. 

 Barley and the oat have each two brothers of low degree — worth- 

 less grasses, living on salt or sandy shores, or on rocky hills, and 

 unknown to the cultivator. 



If wheat, instead of being allowed to ripen its seed, as is our 

 universal practice, should be mown or fed off just before heading 

 out, it would throw out new shoots and continue to grow the 

 summer and autumn through, would come on the second year and 

 deport itself as a perennial ; would in fact, become grass in the 

 usual sense of that word. Wheat is probably not hardy enough 

 to mate a good substitute for Timothy, but it is sufficiently so to 

 justify our statement. 



The reason why wheat under our culture is an annual is that 

 the process of seeding exhausts the plant, and as a consequence 

 it dies out naturally. It is the universal opinion among farmers 

 that the meadow grasses are weakened very much by being al- 



