HORTUS GRAMINIiUS WOBURNENSIS. 169 



by a slight bush liarrow), the roller should be liberally 

 used ; and rolling, for the first two years, should never be 

 neglected at any favourable opportunity. If the seeds are 

 sown in autumn, the top-dressing, re-sowing, and rollino-, will 

 be found equally requisite and beneficial in the following 

 month of May ; and even if repeated in the following autumn, 

 they will greatly forward the intention. This is imitating 

 the process of nature in forming pastures — with this advan- 

 tage, that for one seed of a valuable species of grass supplied 

 to the soil by the slow and gradual process of nature, in one 

 season, a thousand are supplied in the same space of time; 

 and thus take possession of their natural soil, without the 

 danger and inconvenience of expelling its usurpers. 



There has been some difference of opinion respecting the 

 manner of reaping the produce of seedling grasses ; whether 

 by depasturing with sheep, or by mowing after the plants 

 have perfected their seed. The manure supplied by sheep 

 to the young grasses is of great advantage ; but the animals 

 are apt to bite too close to the root, and sometimes tear up 

 the young plants altogether. I have found, on repeated 

 trials, that cropping seedling grasses before they had pro- 

 duced flowers, had the effect of retarding and weakening the 

 after-growth of the plants for that season very much. But 

 after the period of flowering, cropping was found to strengthen, 

 and rather encourage the growth of plants. In the same 

 way I found, that old plants of grass, when cut very close 

 after the first shoots of the spring made their appearance, 

 afforded about one-third less weight of produce in the whole 

 season than those plants of the same species which were left 

 uncut till the flowering culms began to appear. As the 

 advantages of the manure of the sheep may be supplied by 

 top-dressing, and the disadvantages resulting to the tender 

 seedling plants from early and close cropping cannot so 

 speedily be removed, the practice of suffering the grasses to 

 produce fiovi'ers before they are cut, with the application of 

 top-dressings, and the use of the roller, till the spring of the 

 second year, appears to be far more profitable than the 

 former practice of depasturing the seedling grasses at an 

 earlier period than the spring of the second year. But in 



