46 



P ASP ALUM THE " MONOPOLIST. 



It is all or nothing with paspalum. The big coast grass 

 is an '.incompromisnig monopolist. So far as experience on 

 the Richmond goes, no other grass has a chance of living witli 

 it. Clover, prairie, lamb's tongue, rye, and others have been 

 completely ousted from paddocks to which the paspalum has 

 been introduced, and there are many dairymen who declare 

 that e\en buffalo and the despised Paddy's lucerne cannot live 

 against it. This is all the more extraordinary when one con- 

 siders the great feeding qualities of paspalum. It naturally 

 gives the best bucket results wdien it is of moderate growth, 

 but even after it gets away feet high to seed it is relished and 

 eaten low by stock. In the later stages, however, it tends 

 rather to make beef than milk, and dairymen prefer to keep it 

 in bounds. Within the past few years its spread on the Rich- 

 mond has been prodigious, and how much the ever-advancing 

 output of butter is indebted to it would be difficult to esti- 

 mate. It is not that many other grasses don't do well on the 

 coast, but that the paspalum comes strongest Avhen the others, 

 with the exception of the summer couch, are feeblest. It 

 breaks away with the spring, and growling more like a well- 

 cultivated field of green wheat or oats than ordinary grass, it 

 continues to yield profusely all the summer. Of course, it 

 wants rain, but still it can make a heavy growth on moderate 

 falls, provided they are frequent. It solved for the coast the 

 nuestion of a permanent supply in normal seasons of natural 

 feed, for there are other grasses to keep stock moving, if not 

 in full profit, during the winter. 



Its spread has been extraordinarily rapid, and is still pro- 

 ceeding, and most River farmers are its sworn friends. But 

 there are those who dislike it because of its greed. They see 

 a day not far distant when paspalum will be the sole grass of 

 tens of thousands of cows on the Richmond, and prophesy 

 that such a position will not be in the interests of dairying. 

 Thev argue that the cow confined to one article of diet is as 

 likely to get out of gear as the man w^ho is expected to live on 

 porridge and so draw dismal pictures of the future. The ar- 

 gument is hardly a sound one, because the cow after all only 

 varies her diet from one grass food to another, and the varia- 

 tion in the properties consumed w^ould probably be slight. 

 Nevertheless it is one of the first principles of sound stock- 

 raising that fresh pastures and grasses are of the utmost value, 

 and no one who had the choice of an all-paspalum diet for his 

 herd and a diet of mixed grasses would be likelv to choose 

 the former. Those dairymen are probably following the 

 wisest course who are keeping the big grass off at least a por- 

 tion of their farms, and thus maintaining a change of pastures. 



