GRASSES OF SCOTLAND. 143 



Of Lolium perenne there are a great number of varieties known to 

 farmers by various appellations ; all more or less valuable for agri- 

 cultural purposes, viz. Slender rye-grass, Broad spiked rye-grass, 

 Pacey''s rye-grass, RusseWs grass, Wliitworth's grass, Stickneys 

 grass, Panicled rye-grass, Doiible-JIoicered rye-grass. Viviparous rye- 

 grass, besides a great number of others, amounting to at least 

 seventy varieties. I\Ir Sinclair states, that there has been much diffe- 

 rence of opinion respecting the merits and comparative value of rye- 

 grass. It produces an abundance of seed, which is easily collected, 

 and readily vegetates on most kinds of soils, under circumstances of 

 different management It soon arrives at perfection, and produces in 

 its first years of growth a good supply of early herbage, which is 

 much liked by cattle : but the after-crop of rye-grass is very inconsi- 

 derable, and the plant impoverishes the soil in a high degree, if the 

 culms, which are invariably left untouched by cattle, are not cut be- 

 fore the seed advances towards perfection. When this is neglected, 

 the field after midsummer exhibits only a brown sui'face of withered 

 straws. 



For permanent pasture, the produce and nutritive powers of the 

 rye-grass, compared with those of the cock's-foot grass, {Dactylis 

 glomerata), are inferior nearly in the proportion of five to eighteen ; 

 and inferior to the meadow fox-tail (Alopecwus pratensis) in the pro- 

 portion of five to twelve ; and inferior to the meadow fescue {Buce- 

 tum pratense) as five to seventeen. The rye-grass is but a short-lived 

 plant, seldom continuing more than six years in possession of the 

 soil, but is continued by its property of ripening an abundance of 

 seed, which is but little molested by birds, and suffered to fall and 

 vegetate among the root-leaves of the permanent pasture-grasses. It 

 is only within these last forty or fifty years that other species of gras- 

 ses have been tried as a substitute for the rye-grass in formino- artifi- 

 cial pastures, it having been the favourite grass with most farmers 

 from the time of its first cultivation in 1674 to the present period. 



The rye-grass, when not more than three years old, flowers in the 

 second week of June, and ripens its seed in about twenty-five days 

 after : as the plants become older they flower much later, sometimes 

 so late as the beginning of August. It is a very common grass 

 throughout the whole of Britain ; also a native of Lapland, Norway, 



