56- 



The Country Gentleman s Magazine 



deal boxes in which to store small supplies 

 of carrots, turnips, and beet-root, inter- 

 mixed with dampish soil ; and to purchase 

 their potatoes from the vegetable shops 

 at high prices, because, of necessity, in small 

 quantities. And in chosing the place to pur- 

 chase from, we would advise them to avoid 



all shops where bags of potatoes are exhibited 

 at the doors in frosty weather, or where the 

 carrots and beets are allowed to lie exposed 

 on dry shelves or floors till they become so 

 sapless and flexible as to bend without 

 breaking. 



LAWNS AND CROQUET GROUNDS. 



THE dissatisfaction often experienced 

 at having a new croquet ground or 

 bowling green marred with the coarsest and 

 most unsuitable grasses, instead of its being ex- 

 clusively covered by those fme-turf forming 

 kinds, which the seeds sown should have 

 produced, is only illustrative of an annoy- 

 ance which is too frequently experienced 

 by those who expect a fine grassy surface, 

 after sowing the kinds of grasses which 

 they have purchased best adapted for 

 producing that desired result. So frequent, 

 in fact, is the occurrence of this vexatious dis- 

 appointment, that instead of sowing, many 

 resort to the far more expensive mode of lay- 

 ing their greens and lawns with turf from fine 

 old pastures, in which neither coarse grasses 

 nor unsighdy weeds exist. It is only the 

 privileged few who can obtain such turf on 

 any terms, while for the many, and more 

 especially those who possess suburban villa 

 gardens, the choice lies between procuring 

 bad or indifferent turf, and sowing down with 

 the best grass-seed mixtures which they can 

 procure. 



When complaints are made of coarse 

 grasses coming up where only fine ones were 

 intended, and supposed to have been sown, 

 the reason usually assigned is, that the ground 

 must have been so foul that their seeds natu- 

 rally abounded in the soil. And, doubtless, 

 there is often much truth in this assertion; 

 but the natural presence of coarse grass seeds 

 will not suffice to account satisfactorily for 

 the regular and abundant braird of obnoxious 

 grasses where fine lawn grass seeds have alone 



been sown. Even within the bounds of an 

 ordinary bowling-green nature-sown weeds 

 and wild plants of all kinds have their favour- 

 ite spots, where, influenced by a difference in 

 the soil or other causes, they come up thicker 

 in some than they do in other places ; but 

 where any of them appear regularly over 

 the whole surface it is generally safe to 

 infer that they must have been sown in 

 mixture with the grass seeds ; and that 

 they have been so introduced amounts to a 

 certainty when they so appear over a con- 

 siderable area, or in differently situated small 

 patches, which may have been sown with the 

 same seed mixture. Having lately been 

 asked to examine several play-greens and 

 lawns, for which the most approved seed 

 mixtures had been ordered, but all of which 

 presented a coarse and very unsatisfactory 

 appearance, we were struck with the 

 abundant and regular growth, through- 

 out the whole, of that very coarse- 

 tufted growing grass, the Holcus lanatus, or 

 " Yorkshire fog." The presence of this had 

 been pointed to by those from whom the 

 seeds were procured, as proving that the foul- 

 ness complained of must have been in the 

 ground and not in the seed mixtures, "seeing 

 that its light chaffy seeds were so very dif- 

 ferent from any of the kinds supplied ; that 

 had they been there their presence must 

 have been easily detected." On looking at 

 some portions of these mixtures, which had 

 been left over, none of these chaffy seeds 

 were present; but a closer examination 

 shewed, nevertheless, that those of the 



