VIRGINIA LYME GRASS. 95 
feeding value and palatability as it gets woody and the basal leaves 
soon dry up and turn brown. If intended for pasture it should 
therefore be grazed early, and if grown for hay it should be cut 
quite green—long before the plants have started to flower. Its 
value as a pasture or hay grass is considerably lessened by its inability 
to produce a reasonable second growth. 
When sown alone, fifteen pounds of seed should be used to the 
acre. 
The strain on the soil will be an easy one by alternating the crops, provided only that you are not 
chary in saturating the parched earth with rich manure, or in scattering unsightly ashes upon the 
exhausted fields; thus, too, your land is refreshed by changing the crops, and in the meantime there is 
not the unproductiveness of untilled land.—Virgil, Georgics, 37 B.C. 
Where cattle may run about roving at will, 
From pasture to pasture, poor belly to fill, 
There pasture and cattle, both hungry and bare, 
For want of good husbandry worser do fare. 
—Thomas Tusser, Five Hundreth Pointes of Husbandrie, 1557. 
The calicular leaves enclose the tender flowers, and the flowers themselves lie wrapped about the 
seeds, in their rudiment and first formations, which being advanced, the flowers fall away; and are 
therefore contrived in variety of figures, best satisfying the intention; handsomely observable in 
hooded and gaping flowers, and the butterfly blooms of leguminous plants, the lower leaf closely 
involving the rudimental cod, and the alary or wingy divisions embracing or hanging over it.—Sir 
Thomas Browne, The Garden of Cyrus, 1658. 
And tryed time yet tought me greater thinges; : 
the sodain rising of the raging seas, 
The soothe of byrdes by beating of their winges, 
The powre of herbes, both which can hurt and ease; 
And which be wont t’enrage the restless sheepe, 
And which be wont to worke eternal sleepe. 
—Spenser, Shepherd's Calendar, 1579. 
Some of the Ancients, and likewise divers of the Modern Writers, that have labored in Natura 
Magick, have noted a Sympathy between the Sun, Moon, and some principal Stars; and certain 
Herbs and Plants. And so they have denominated some Herbs Solar, and some Lunar, and such like 
toys put into great words. It is manifest, that there are some Flowers that have respect to the Sun 
in two kinds; the one by opening and shutting, and the other by bowing and inclining the Head. 
Bieere piss iere Of this, there needeth no such solemn Reason to be assigned, as to say, that they rejoyce 
at the presence of the Sun, and mourn at the absence thereof. For it is nothing else but a little loading 
of the Leavs, and swelling them at the bottom, with the moisture of the Air; whereas the dry Air 
doth extend them. And they make it a piece of the wonder, That Garden Claver will hide the Stalk, 
when the Sun sheweth bright, which is nothing but a full expansion of the Leavs.—Bacon, Natural 
History, 1625. 
