338 HORTUS GRAMINEUS WOBURNENSIS. 



results of all my experiments perfectly agree in confirming the 

 opinion, that for permanent pasture, the grasses sown should be 

 free from any admixture of annual, or white grain crops. 



The results of all the experiments on light sandy soils, tend to 

 confirm the opinion before expressed at page 95, respecting the 

 superiority of depasturing or mowing seedling grasses the first 

 year. Oxen are liable to poach the surface ; and horses and sheep 

 weaken the seedling plants, by cropping too near the roots. 

 Sheep are evidently the least hurtful. By frequently rolling the 

 surface, and mowing the produce, the young plants establish 

 themselves better in the ground, and all of the plants raised are 

 preserved ; but by leaving the plants to perfect their seed the first 

 year, and excluding cattle, the young plants are deprived of the 

 benefit of the manure supplied by the sheep, which, at this stage 

 of the growth of seedling grasses, is more particularly valuable on 

 a soil of this nature, than on rich ancient pasture land ; as the 

 roller, when used judiciously, presses the droppings into the sur- 

 face of the ground, and brings the manure in contact with the 

 fibrous roots of the plants. It is evident, however, that all the 

 benefits accruing to the plants from depasturing the first year, 

 may be supplied by a top-dressing in the autumn or spring, and a 

 liberal use of the roller, when the ground is in a suitable state to 

 benefit by it. But suffering the seedling plants to perfect their 

 seed before the crop is collected, is doubtless not the best 

 practice : in all my experiments, the results were decidedly in 

 favour of this opinion. Atop-dressing should never be applied 

 without sowing some of the seeds along with it ; once sowing will 

 never be found efficient to form the most valuable sward in the 

 shortest space of time, on a light dry sandy soil. 



Should the mode of depasturing, instead of mowing the first 

 year's crop, be still preferred in any case, I may be permitted 

 once more to remark, that nothing weakens or retards the growth 

 of grasses so much, as cropping them close at the time their first 

 tender shoots appear in the spring. From various trials it ap- 

 peared, that close cropping the produce of this soil early in the 

 spring, and late in autumn, was much less injurious to its old 

 sward than to seedling grasses. When a given space of the 

 same species of grass was cut close to the roots towards the end 

 of March, and another space left uncropped till the last week in 

 April, the produce of each space being afterwards taken at three 

 different cuttings, the produce of the space that was left un- 



