76 llORTUS GRAMINEUS WOBURNENSIS. 



(festuca pratensis), meadow fox-tail (alopecurus prateitsis), 

 meadow barley (honleum pralense), smooth meadow-grass 

 (poa pratensis), and meadow oat-grass (avena pratensis), are 

 of this number. These facts, obtained from the results of 

 experiments and attentive observation, made on these grasses 

 when cultivated singly, and also when combined with others, 

 as in their natural places of growth, offer sufficient proofs to 

 decide, that it is not to the great length of time they require 

 to arrive at perfection that the want of success, in attempts 

 to renew rich pastures, is to be imputed. 



On converting this land into tillage, the first crops arc 

 generally too luxuriant. Were we to conclude, from this 

 circumstance, that the superior pasture grasses require a 

 much richer soil to produce them in perfection than what is 

 required for the production of grain crops ; and, conse- 

 quently, that a course of white crops, by lessening consider- 

 ably this degree of fertility, would proportionally render the 

 land less fitted for the reproduction of its former valuable 

 grasses, it would not be just ; because it is evident that this 

 over-richness of the land for the first crops of grain, does not 

 arise solely from that degree of richness in the soil which pro- 

 duced the superior grasses in such abundance, but rather from 

 the accession of so large a quantity of vegetable matter, 

 which is at once supplied to the land by ploughing in the 

 turf. 



Having met with no specific information in any agricul- 

 tural works within my reach respecting the change produced 

 on the nature of rich pasture land by a course of grain crops, 

 I made several experiments to supply the apparent defect. 

 The results of one of these experiments I may be permitted 

 to detail. 



A space of two square yards of rich ancient pasture land 

 was dug to the depth of the surface soil, which was eight 

 inches, and removed to a place more convenient for making 

 the experiment, but placed on a subsoil of the same nature 

 as that on which it was before incumbent. Three inches 

 from the bottom of the mass were first placed on the sub- 

 soil, and the tarf was then reversed on this, to the depth of 

 five inches; this mode was adopted, to place the ground 



