192 THE YEAR-BOOK OF AGRICULTURE. 



be cut when in flower. " It has, indeed, been proved that plants of nearly all sorts, if cut 

 when in full vigor, and afterwards carefully dried, without any waste of their nutritive juices, 

 contain nearly double the quantity of nutritive matter which they do when allowed to attain 

 their full growth, and make some progress towards decay." 



Now, the different kinds of grasses begin to flower at'tery different periods ; and as it is 

 evident that the best time to mow is when the greatest number of the most valuable grasses 

 are simultaneously in flower, we may, perhaps, say that the herbage 'should b.e in that state 

 of forwardness which indicates the full blossoming of all the earlier pasture grasses, and the 

 ripeness of seed of the earliest; or, in other words, the seeds of the sweet-scented vernal 

 grass, (Anthoxanthum odoratum,) sweet-scented soft grass, meadow fox-tail, (Alopecurus pra- 

 tenses,) sheep's fescue, (Festuca ovina,) soft broom grass, (Bromus mollis,} etc., may be com- 

 pletely ripe ; and the smooth-stalked meadow grass, (Poa pratensis, ) hard and smooth fescues, 

 (Festuca duriuscula and Festuca glabra,) common quaking grass, (Briza media,} and crested 

 dog's-tail, may all be in full blow. This will generally be about the middle of June. If the 

 cutting of the crop be much protracted, the plants become withered at the bottom of their 

 stems : thus the roots are injured, the future growth of the blades is weakened, and the eddish 

 or aftermath materially lessened in quantity and deteriorated in quality, while the ripening 

 of the seeds greatly exhausts the land. On the other hand, if cut too soon, there will be a 

 loss in the quantity of hay ; the lower or shorter portion, one inch in the height of which will 

 weigh as much as two inches of the top, will not have sufficient time to grow to a profitable 

 length, and a loss will be thereby incurred by the grass withering too much when being made. 

 It is much better to be too early than too late. 



The proper season for mowing the grass, so as to secure the largest amount of nutrient pro- 

 perties within it, being thus determined, the next consideration is the preservation of these 

 useful qualities in ^the hay. 



Experiments show that, out of the various constituents of which grass is composed, the mu- 

 cilage, starch, gluten, and sugar, which are soluble in water, are alone retained in the body 

 of an animal for the purpose of life, the bitter extractive and saline matters being considered 

 as assisting or modifying the functions of digestion, rather than as being truly nutritive parts 

 of the compound, and being voided with the woody fibre. The woody fibre serves only to give 

 bulk to the food, and therefore distension to the stomach, which, when moderately filled, brings 

 those muscles into active exercise which tend so much to promote healthy digestion, by keep- 

 ing the food in constant motion. 



The principal object, then, which is to be aimed at in hay -making, is, to retain the soluble 

 portion of the grass in perfect integrity. 



This cannot be completely accomplished because of the imperfection in our present mode 

 of hay-making, and the many casualties attending it. From various experiments made by Dr. 

 Thomson, it has been found that 387J parts (by weight) of grass form only 100 when made 

 into hay. This amount of grass, under favorable circumstances, contains of matter soluble in 

 hot water 28-13 parts, and in cold water 8-21 parts; but instead of this amount, the equiva- 

 lent quantity of hay, or 100 parts, contains only 16 instead of 28 parts soluble in hot water, 

 and 5-06 instead of 8J parts soluble in cold water. A very large proportion of the soluble or 

 nutritive matter of the grass has obviously disappeared in its conversion into hay. The result 

 of the process has therefore been to approximate the soft, juicy, and tender grass to woody 

 fibre, by washing out or decomposing its sugar and other soluble constituents. " These facts 

 enable us to explain the reason why cattle consume a larger amount of hay than is equivalent 

 to the relative quantity of grass. Thus, animals which can subsist upon one hundred pounds 

 of grass, should be able to retain the same condition by the use of twenty-five pounds of hay, 

 if the latter suffered no deterioration in drying ; but experiments have shown that a cow, for 

 instance, thriving on one hundred pounds to one hundred and twenty pounds of grass, re- 

 quires twenty-five pounds of hay and nine pounds of barley or malt." The great cause of 

 this deterioration is the water which may be present, either from the incomplete removal of 

 the natural amount of water in the grass by drying, or by the absorption of this fluid from 

 the atmosphere. "Water, then, existing in hay from either of these sources, will induce fer- 

 mentation, a process by which one of the most important constituents of the grass namely, 



