186 AN AMERICAN FARMER IN ENGLAND. 



nourishment can no longer ascend from the root. The right 

 quantity of seed for this will vary in different soils a very 

 rich, deep soil needing less than a more sterile one, because 

 in the latter the roots cannot extend far enough to collect 

 the requisite food and drink to make a large, strong, open 

 stool, and more herbage will grow upon the same space by 

 having the stools stand closer. 



In some degree proportionately to the closeness of the 

 fibre and the fineness of the grass, will be its nourishing 

 quality, so that ninety pounds of fine, close-grown hay, from 

 a thick-seeded meadow, may be of equal value with a hun 

 dred pounds of a coarser, ranker quality. But the nourish 

 ment is by no means in the inverse ratio of size ; so that for 

 all ordinary purposes, with all the usual hay-grasses, the far 

 mer will find his profit in studying to obtain the largest bur 

 then of grass. For this end, I am inclined to think English 

 farmers often sow too much seed, Americans not enough. It 

 seems, however, to be the best farmers in other respects that 

 sow the most seed in England. 



There is one consideration that I have omitted to mention 

 against the common practice on American farms, where hay 

 is an important staple crop : it is generally an object to re 

 tain a clean sward of grass as long as possible, without the 

 necessity of breaking up, from the grass having run out, that 

 is, given place to weeds, or to finer and less profitable grasses. 

 Where the seed has been thickly sown, the grass takes more 

 entire possession of the surface, and retains it longer. The 

 thicker grass seed is sown, therefore, other things being equal, 

 the longer it will lay. 



I have known, in a district where it was the custom to 

 sow four to eight quarts of timothy seed, on two occasions, 

 twenty quarts sowed. The result w r as a finer grass in both 

 cases ; in one it was thought the crop was much larger, and 



