lf)2 llORTUS <;ramineus WOlll. rnknsis. 



creeping sof't-gvass, meadow cat's-tail, avvnless brome-grass, 

 darnel-like fescue, and rough-stalked meadow-grass. The 

 perennial ray-grass ranks with those that contain the least. 

 Of the grasses that are not indigenous, the long-awned, or 

 barley-like sheep's fescue, the fertile, and nerved meadow- 

 grasses, stand the highest. 



The composition of the nutritive matter of the leaves of 

 these grasses, differs chiefly in the proportions of starch or 

 mucilage, and the bitter extractive and saline matters of 

 which they are constituted ; for gluten and sugar form but 

 a small part of their composition, compared to that which 

 they form in the culms or hay crop. 



The bitter extractive and saline matters, are considered as 

 assisting or modifying the functions of digestion, rather 

 than as being truly nutritive parts of the compound. The 

 experiments already detailed, showed that the mucilage, 

 starch, gluten, and sugar, w^ere retained in the body of the 

 animal for the purposes of life, and that the bitter extractive 

 and saline matters were voided with the woody fibre ; which, 

 combined, constituted the excrements, or those parts of the 

 vegetable not retained in the body of the animal for the 

 purposes of life. 



Tares and white clover are very succulent plants, and 

 their fattening powers are well known ; but when cultivated 

 singly, or without admixture of any other plants, there are 

 several instances that have come under my own observation, 

 where they have been, in cold moist weather in the early 

 part of the spring, productive of the diseases termed red- 

 water, and diarrhoea or looseness ; the former in sheep fed 

 on white clover, and the latter in cattle fed on tares. In 

 estimating, therefore, the comparative nutritive powers of 

 these difierent proportions of vegetable principles in different 

 grasses, or other plants, proved by experience, it appears like- 

 wise necessary to ascertain their degree of succulency, or the 

 different proportions of vvater and woody fibre combined in 

 them, as it will prove the proportion which the saline matters 

 bear to the truly nutritive, as well as to the woody or indiges- 

 tible portion of the vegetable. The statements of the loss of 

 weight which the different grasses sustain in drying, given 



