VI DEDICATION'. 



live and ornamented country, enriched with abundant 

 harvests, colonized with substantial and elegant resi- 

 dences, and above all, peopled with an intelligent, scien- 

 tific, and grateful tenantry. 



You, who have continually promoted, and in so many 

 cases yourself put to the test of experience, useful disco- 

 veries and improvements in Agriculture, will, as I have 

 persuaded myself, discern the importance of those in- 

 quiries, which enable us to distinguish the numerous 

 species of plants promiscuously blended in our pastures, 

 to ascertain in what degree, and for what reason, each of 

 them is valuable, to learn what are the qualities of land 

 to which the several sorts are congenial, and to form the 

 combinations of them which are best adapted for 

 creating and speedily maturing a superior and per- 

 manent herbage on the ditferent soils, as the uses of the 

 farmer may require. I promise myself that you will 

 acknowledge the advantage of those studies, which tend 

 to facilitate the supply of our markets with selected 

 seeds suitable for these purposes. I am solicitous to 

 excite you to examine, and promote the examination by 

 others, of the question, whether a greater proportion, 

 even of the lightest farms, than is now so devoted, may 

 not in ordinary times be profitably employed in a state of 

 permanent grass, when the selection of plants proper for 

 each soil shall be more perfectly known and more easily 

 attainable ; and whether the greater facility of obtaining 

 such selection may not enable the farmer, in the case of 

 a recurrence of such heav^ national reverses as the 

 Agricultural interest has of late sustained, to suspend the 

 operations of tillage for such a season as the exigency of 

 his distresses may require, with a less diminution of 

 produce to himself, and a less deterioration of the estate 

 of the landlord, than has been felt during the late 

 calamitous period. 



I am conscious, that in the investigation of this im- 



