EW YORK Yah eine EXPERIMENT STATION. 
: they fail to supply the abundant and nutritious grasses which 
ae formerly characterized them, and that in consequence farm 
- animals are dependent more and more upon forage crops for their 
wi support. 
If this belief in the deterioration of our pastures is well- 
founded, it may be accounted for partly through the climatic 
changes which seem to have attended the clearing up of vast areas 
of territory, more perhaps from changes in the character of our 
soils, which denuded of their protecting forests have ceased to 
retain the moisture necessary to the best development of the 
grasses; while over those areas under cultivation, where grasses 
are alternating in one system of rotation or another, it is doubt- 
less true that those native grasses which by centuries of selection 
had by their survival found themselves best adapted to the 
existing conditions, have been eradicated and given place to 
foreign varieties more convenient for use in seeding. 
‘there stragglers of these ancient races which have survived the 
and which, again being sought out and properly cared for, might 
be made to resume their former places, from which they were 
expelled. 
One can not but have observed, even upon closely kept lawns, 
how certain varieties of grass have in certain localities entirely 
appropriated the ground, having through roots and creeping stems 
reached out and encroached upon neighboring grasses which, too 
feeble to withstand them, have been quite driven out; and yet, 
strangely enough, this method of propagation has rarely, if ever, 
been made available upon an extended scale. If, upon ground 
already occupied, any given variety of grass may thus establish 
itself, why, under the most favorable conditions of thoroughly 
clean plats, may it not be expected that these same and many 
other varieties, which have proved to be desirable, will not rap- 
idly spread until the entire area is fully occupied? Already at 
the Connecticut station in New Haven, and at a branch station at 
South Manchester, this system is being entered upon, and it is 
_ intended to enter upon the same line of work at this Station, the 
_ plan being to select such clumps of grasses as may here and there 
be found in this neighborhood and State or elsewhere, and by 
Be Seep lanting them into clean plats permit their spread and 
ae 
It is doubtless true that careful search would reveal here and 
: _ warfare made upon them by our modern methods of agrieulture, 
-_ 
