NEW GRASSES FOR OLD STATIONS. 801 



adapted to the most valuable grasses. There the soil suffers less 

 from freezing, and is less exposed on account of the absence of 

 snow. 



New Grasses for New or Old Stations. — Although the above 

 heading may be "new" the subject is now old, for as long ago 

 as 1843, in a prize essay for the Now York Agricultural Society, 

 J. J. Thomas said : " The great deficiency in the number and 

 variety of our cultivated grasses has been long felt by intelligent 

 cultivators ; and a more complete order of succession, afforded 

 by a mixture in pastures, is an important requisite. That among 

 the number of nearly two hundred species indigenous to the 

 Northern and Middle States, there are some which may prove 

 equal if not superior to any we now cultivate, scarcely admits a 

 doubt. Some of our native grasses have been tested in Great 

 Britai'.!, and found valuable." 



The late I. A. Laphani, a sagacious botanist of Wisconsin, in 

 the State Agricultural Keport for 1853, wrote: ''The import- 

 ance of introducing new grasses, and efforts to improve those 

 already cultivated, cannot be over-estimated. It is not at all 

 certain that we have the best kinds, nor that those we have are 

 brought to the greatest degree of perfection. Doubtless they 

 may be improved as well as fruits and live stock." 



A little later, in 1858, Dr. Thurber, in the American Agricul- 

 turist, forcibly expresses a similar vie\v: "A dozen sorts, prob- 

 ably, cover nineteen-twentieths of all the cultivated meadow 

 land from Maine to Texas. It can hardly be supposed that so 

 limited a number meets, in the best manner possible, all the 

 wants of so great a variety of soil and climate. This is one of 

 the pressing wants of our agriculture. A single new grass, that 

 would add but an extra yield of a hundred pounds to the acre, 

 would add millions of dollars anuually to the productive wealth 

 of the nation." 



J. R. Dodge, in the Report of the Department of Agriculture 



