SECRETARY'S REPORT. 157 



These plants in each instance were counted with the utmost 

 care by a farmer now living in this State, then in the employ of 

 Mr. Sinclair, and the correctness of his results may be relied on. 



Now it is a well known fact that the sward of a rich old pas- 

 ture is closely packed, filled up, or interwoven with plants and 

 no vacant spaces occur. Yet, in a closely crowded turf of such 

 a pasture, only one thousand distinctly rooted plants were found 

 on a square foot, and these were made up of twenty different 

 species. The soil should be supplied with a proper number of 

 plants, else a loss of labor, time and space will be incurred ; 

 but however heavily seeded a piece may be with one or two 

 favorite grasses, small vacant spaces will occur, which, though 

 they may not seem important in themselves, when taken in the 

 aggregate, will be found to diminish very considerably the yield 

 of an acre, even if they are so small as not to be perceived. 

 And undoubtedly some allowance should be made for the seeds 

 and young plants destroyed by insects, birds and various acci- 

 dental causes : but even after all deductions for these, we see 

 that in this btate, at least, there is no deficiency in the quanti- 

 ties of seed used, and the imperfectly covered ground cannot 

 be explained in this way. 



The above table is also important as an illustration of the 

 truth of my general proposition. It shows that in those pas- 

 tures where few species were found together, whether in old, 

 natural pastures or in artificial meadows, the number of plants 

 on a given space was proportionably small. Sinclair, too, who 

 had observed carefully and extensively, writes on this point in 

 regard to the practice of ovcrseeding, as follows : " When an 

 excess of grass seed is sown, the seeds, in general, all vegetate, 

 but the plants make little, if any progress, until from the want 

 of nourishment to the roots, and the confined space for the 

 growth of the foliage, a certain number decay, and give the 

 requisite room to the proper number of j^lants ; and that will 

 be according as there are a greater or less variety of difierent 

 species of grasses combined in the sward." 



It is proper to make some allowance for bad seed, it is true, 

 but our practice is defective and uneconomical. In the exami- 

 nation of the rich and productive pasture turf, from twelve to 

 twenty species were found closely mixed together, and there 

 were six or seven plants to the square incli. AVe sow seed 



