HORTUS GRAMINEUS WOBURNENSIS. 257 



creeping soft-grass (Holcus mollis), and white or Dutch clover 

 (TriJ'olium repens). 



Dry, elevated situations, sandy heaths, and chalk lands, where 

 the above grasses constitute the principal natural herbage, are 

 less capable of being rendered fit for the production of superior 

 grasses than peat-bogs, or waste lands that lie under circum- 

 stances favourable to irrigation. The latter only require proper 

 draining, paring, and burning, and the application of hot manure, 

 as lime and sand, to fit them for the production of the best 

 grasses, the staple or constitution of such soils being so rich and 

 good. But dry sandy soils require more labour and expense to 

 bring them near, in some degree, to an equivalent state of pro- 

 ductiveness, which can only be effected by the application of 

 large quantities of clay, and by mixing it minutely with the soil. 

 (See remarks on this subject at pp. 124, 125.) But though poor 

 hungry sandy soils cannot, economically, be improved in such a 

 degree as to fit them for the production of the superior grasses, 

 like peat-soils, which in their natural or unimproved state are 

 €ven less valuable than the poor sandy soils ; nevertheless, there 

 is sufficient evidence from practice, to prove that such soils may 

 be converted to tillage for some years, and returned again to grass 

 in a highly improved state, yielding a produce of double the value 

 of that they originally afforded. I have witnessed improvements 

 to this degree, on such soils, in the farms of the Duke of 

 Bedford, at Woburn. In the fourth volume of Communica- 

 tions to the Board of Agriculture, there is a variety of evidence 

 to the same effect. If it should appear, however, from the results 

 of the experiments here made on the grasses natural to these 

 soils, of which an account will be found in the following pages, 

 that the kinds of grasses employed in the improvements now 

 alluded to, were not the best fitted for the soils in question, it 

 will follow that such improvements may be greatly extended, by 

 adopting those grasses best fitted for the soil, and that without 

 any additional trouble or expense. 



FESTUCA ovina. Sheep's Fescue. 



Specific character : Panicle unilateral, rather close; florets cy- 

 lindrical, pointed or awned, smooth at the base and at the 

 edges of the inner valve ; stem square ; leaves folded, 

 bristle-shaped; stipula short and obtuse. 8m. Engl. Fl. i. 



P- 



139. 



