ARTIFICIAL FIELDS 



He is obliged to do so, because grasses vary so much. 

 Some of them shoot up quickly and die after the first year. 

 Others live for two years, whilst a great many bide their 

 time, developing very slowly, and not reaching their full 

 growth until the fourth or fifth year. 



Some are tall and vigorous, others are short ; some flower 

 early in the season, and others very late. Many send out 

 quantities of suckers or runners at the base, so that they 

 form a dense, intricate turf — a mass of stems and roots 

 thickly covering the ground. 



A farmer wants his pasture to begin early and to continue 

 late ; he must have a good first year's crop, and it must re- 

 main good for years afterwards. So that his calculations as 

 regards the proportions of the different grass seeds which he 

 requires are of the most abstruse character. 



To sow such " permanent pasture,"' prepared by blending 

 together grasses and clovers with an eye to all the above 

 necessities, there will be needed some seven million seeds for 

 every acre. 



The art consists in coaxing the good, lasting, nutritious 

 ones to make both tall hay, rich aftermath, and a close, 

 thick turf below, and, until these are ready, to use the 

 annual and biennial grasses. 



Such beautifully shaven, green, soft turf as one sees in the 

 lawns of cathedrals or the "quads'' at Oxford and Cam- 

 bridge has been most carefully and regularly watered, rolled, 

 and mown for hundreds of years. It is not easy to keep 

 even a tennis - lawn in good condition. Little tufts of 

 daisies appear. Their leaves lie so flat that they escape the 

 teeth of the mower, and they are not so liable to be injured 

 by tennis-shoes as the tiny upright grass-shoots which are 

 trying to spring up everywhere. The Plantain is even 



2l8 



