YELLOW OAT GRASS. BS) 
Habits of growth: Yellow Oat Grass is medium early, flowering 
a little later than Orchard Grass. When soil and climate are suit- 
able, it makes a good:stand in a short time and spreads readily. 
Agricultural value: On account of its somewhat tufted habit, 
it should always be sown with other grasses. Its principal value is 
for bottom grass in hay mixtures, as it increases both the yield and 
the feeding quality. After cutting it produces a great number of 
new stems and leaves, and the second growth may be profitably 
used for either hay or pasture. All kinds of stock like it, and in 
some parts of Europe it is considered one of the most valuable fodder 
grasses. Experiments in Canada, however, have not given prom- 
ising results. When sown alone, twenty to twenty-five pounds of 
seed should be applied to the acre. 
Seed: The commercial seed of Yellow Oat Grass is generally 
very impure, as it is always secured from mixtures with other grasses, 
especially Tall Oat and Orchard Grass, and afterwards separated by 
sieves. It is yellowish-brown and weighs from five to six pounds a 
bushel. 
These keep 
Seeming and savour all the winter long. 
—Shakespeare, Winters’ Tale, Act 4, Sc. III., 1592 
Over-luxuriance in corn is repressed by the teeth of cattle, but only while it is in the blade; in 
which case, if depastured upon ever so often, no injury to it when in the ear will be the result—Pliny, 
Natural History, 23-79. 
The elements of agriculture are the same as those of the world: water, earth, air, the sun. These 
things are to be understood before you sow your seed, which is the origin of vegetation.—Marcus 
Terentius Varro, 116-27 B.C. 
Everyone will tell you that manure is the best thing in the world for agriculture, and every one 
can see how naturally it is produced. Still, though the method of production 1s accurately known, 
though there 1s every facility to get it in abundance, the fact remains that, while one man takes pains, 
to have manure collected, another is entirely neglectful. And yet God sends us rain from heaven, 
and every hollow place becomes a standing pool, while earth supplies material of every kind; the 
sower, too, about to sow, must cleanse the soil, and what he takes as refuse from it needs only to be 
thrown into water and time itself will do the rest, shaping all to gladden earth. For matter in every 
shape, nay, earth itself, in stagnant water turns to fine manure—Xenophon, The Economist, 434-355 
B.C. 
