104 GRASSES AND FORAGE PLANTS. 



fact, that in several instances within my own knowledge, cattle 

 have died of hoove from eating it early in the spring. 



It resembles in the shape of its leaves, and somewhat in 

 its cluster-like growth, that species of garlic which used formerly 

 to be grown in kitchen gardens called cives, or more properly 

 chives. Its seed stalks and seeds are almost precisely like the 

 seed stalks and seeds of the common plantain. 



It grows both on high and low marshes, but is very seldom 

 worth cutting on those tracts where it grows by itself and 

 without the admixture of other grasses. 



It is proper to state in this connection that experiments have 

 been made to introduce this valuable grass into our fresh wet 

 meadows, and with good success. 



Most of the superior salt marsh grasses are greatly improved 

 by ditching, while the poorer and comparatively worthless plants 

 found there very soon die out after this operation and give place 

 to more valuable species. It may be safely asserted that, on an 

 average, the value of the marsh is nearly doubled by it, while 

 the vegetable, peaty matter taken from it is sufficient, if properly 

 used, to pay a considerable portion of the outlay. 



There is also a small family of plants called the yellow eyed 

 grasses, or the star grasses, consisting of only two species, the 

 first of which is the Yellow Eyed Grass, (xyris bufbosa,') 

 flowering in July, August and September, growing on sandy 

 and peaty soils, and bogs near the coast ; and the second, the 

 Common Yellow Eyed Grass, (xyris caroliniana,^ flowering 

 in August, on sandy swamps. These are beautiful grasses, of 

 no special agricultural value. 



There is still another great family of plants which, though of 

 no agricultural value in point of nutritive properties as com- 

 pared with the true grasses, is, nevertheless, extensively used in 

 New England for forage purposes, and consequently deserves a 

 passing mention. I refer to the sedges, and plants constituting 

 the coarse and innutritions herbage properly included in the 

 term, carex, a large and prominent genus of grass-like plants, 

 consisting in all of about four hundred and fifty species known 

 to botanists, extensively diffused over all tlie damp parts of the 

 globe, and in popular language called grasses. A few species 



