260 INDIANA HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS 



Many attempts have been made to fence with earth, 

 and nearly all fail — Cause; the sods are piled up like 

 laying stone wall, and in two or three years, the whole 

 fence is a pile of the softest fine manure. Others have 

 tried to pile up earth and sod it over with the native 

 sods. But these rarely succeed; the grass dies, and the 

 bank being too steep, slips down in spring, and there 

 being no rails on top the cattle soon form a path over. But 

 if some cheap plan of making a bank two or three feet 

 high, from the bottom of a ditch on each side, with a 

 gradual slope, which would soon grass over with blue 

 grass sowed upon it, can be adopted, in which bank-posts 

 with two or three rails just like the old fashioned yankee 

 post and rail wall fence — it will be complete. 



Your second and third questions relate to prairie grass 

 and hay. 



The quality of prairie grass is as various as of domes- 

 tic grasses. Of the section of country where I live, 

 (which is near the South end of Lake Michigan,) I will 

 say that no grass in the world is better adapted for sum- 

 mer keeping of cattle and sheep. Grass in immense 

 abundance, can be selected for winter feed, which if well 

 put up, is as good as timothy or red top. In fact, there 

 is a kind of grass which I deem the original red top, 

 growing wild, and affording two or three tons per acre. 



In answer to your fourth question, I must say, that 

 the soil upon the prairies of the West is as diversified as 

 in any other section of the country; but that generally 

 speaking it is adapted to the culture of all the true 

 grasses. Whether timothy and blue grass will grow upon 

 the unploughed ground, may be best answered by assur- 

 ing you, that whenever you find an old Indian village or 

 much used encampment, you will find the ground covered 

 with blue grass, growing most luxuriantly, and in some 

 places white clover; and wherever timothy seed is scat- 

 tered along roads, or in pastures, it grows readily. 



Part of the fifth question is already answered. The 

 blue grass will flourish by cultivation, and afford excel- 



