234 HORTUS GRAMINEUS WOBURNENSIS. 



cies, are properties which recommend it very highly for permanent 

 pasture, in company with other kinds peculiarly adapted for the 

 purpose. The roots, although only slightly creeping, yet seem to 

 forbid any recommendation of the plant for the alternate hus- 

 bandry ; for permanent pasture, however, this habit is here of ad- 

 vantage, as securing the extension and continuance of the plant 

 without the serious objection of impoverishing the soil by the un- 

 profitable production underground of vegetable matter, which 

 occurs in the growth of the powerful creeping roots of Poa pra- 

 tensis, Triticum repens, Holcus mollis, &c. Should the seed of this 

 species prove obnoxious to the same diseases as the seed of the 

 Alopecurus pratensis, (which I suspect will prove to be the case,) 

 this slight creeping habit of the roots will add to the comparative 

 value of this new species, as allowing of its cultivation with more 

 certainty of success and smaller cost, than the general defects of 

 seed in the Alopecurus pratensis permits in its cultivation. 



It comes into flower in April or early in May, and continues to 

 emit flowering culms until September and October. 



From a careful perusal of the foregoing series of facts and ob- 

 servations, the following conclusion will appear just : that the 

 failures in attempts to renew the original valuable sward on rich 

 ancient pasture lands, rise not from the length of time that 

 the plants require to arrive at perfection from seed, nor from the 

 injury the land sustains from a course of grain crops ; but evidently 

 from the neglect of employing the seeds of those grasses which are 

 natural to the soil, and that constituted the produce of the valu- 

 able pasture. What those grasses are, and their comparative 

 merits and value, the figures, and the details of experiments, will 

 in a great measure have shewn. 



It appears most unaccountable that, at this day, when the 

 different branches of practical agriculture seem to be so well un- 

 derstood, it should be asserted, and without contradiction too, 

 that it is of no importance what kinds of grasses are sown upon 

 lands for the purposes of permanent pasture, as Nature itself, 

 in the course of time, will produce those kinds of grasses best 

 adapted to the soil, and which only remain permanent. Now, as 

 the whole art of cultivating plants is nothing more than assisting 

 Nature in the process of the growth of vegetables, surely the 

 above doctrine can amount to nothing more than the confession of 



