56 



The Country Gaitkmaiis Magazine 



ornamental as well as ordinary pastures, and attract the early notice of grass cultivators ; 

 irrigated lands, especially where the soil, is of and although the London Society for the 

 a clayey or stiflish nature, and it will also Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and 

 thrive on lightish drv soils if not under ordi- Commerce awarded a premium in 1777 to 

 naiy fertility; but as its productive powers Mr Wm. Gosse, of Hants, for collecting its 



seeds, and Mr G. Swayne, of Pucklechurch, 

 included its seeds in a collection of eleven 

 kinds, for which he in 1781 obtained a 

 jn-emium from the Bath Society, yet Dr Jas. 



Kestiicii praten^;s, reduced in size, slicwing liabit of growth. 



are not fully developed till the second year 

 of its growth, it is less suitable for alternate 

 husbandr}-. 



Notwithstanding the undoubted excellence 

 and usefulness of the F. pratensis, it failed to 



Caly; 



Seed, natural size. Seed masnihed. 



Anderson, of Monkshill, Aberdeenshire, took 

 no notice of it in a Hst of indigenous grasses 

 described, figured, and recommended for cul- 

 tivation in the second volume of his essays 

 relative to agriculture, published in 1784; and 

 it was not till after Mr Sinclair's favourable 

 report of its cultivation at Woburn, as given 

 in the " Hortus Gramineus Woburnensis " in 



Floret magnified. 



Spikelet 



1824, that its real merits came to be ap- 

 preciated; since which time its seeds have 

 been in large demand. Grown on a fertile 

 peat soil, with coal ashes as manure, in 

 the Woburn grass garden, its produce, as cut 

 on ,the 1 6th of April, was at the rate of 

 10,890 lb. per acre, 13,612 lb. at the time 

 of flowering, which lost in drying 7146 lb.; 

 while, at the time of seed ripening, the green 



