The Grasses Including Indian Corn. 171 



cereals oats, wheat, barley, and rye furnish large quantities of 

 useful forage. Bell 1 reports that at Jackson, Mississippi, 15 acres 

 of winter rye furnished one-half the pasturage for 25 cows. Tracy 2 

 states that in Florida and the Texas Gulf country 1 acre of Guinea 

 grass, Panicum maximum, will carry 4 head of cattle thru the en- 

 tire season by soilage, or 3 head by grazing. Stubbs of the Louisi- 

 ana Station 3 reports teosinte, Euchlaena Mexicana, a giant grass re- 

 sembling sorghum, as yielding over 50 tons per acre. This plant 

 is too tropical in character to have value outside a belt bordering 

 the Gulf of Mexico. 



235. The abuse of pasturage. It is a fact which cannot escape the 

 attention of students of agricultural economics, that our stockmen 

 rely too blindly upon pastures for the maintenance of their cattle 

 during half the year. But a few centuries ago the inhabitants of 

 Great Britain trusted to the growth of natural herbage for the sup- 

 port of their stock not only in summer but thruout the entire year. 

 If their animals, foraging for themselves as best they could, survived 

 the winter, all was well ; if they died from starvation, it was an ' * act 

 of God." We have abandoned the crude practices of our ancestors, 

 and now carefully store in barns abundance of provender for feed- 

 ing flocks and herds during winter's rigor. We are amazed that 

 our ancestors were so improvident as to gather no winter feed for 

 their cattle, while for ours great barns are built and stored with 

 provender. By turning cattle to pasture in spring and letting them 

 forage as best they may until winter we show that all the barbaric 

 blood has not yet been eliminated from our veins. If the summer 

 rains are timely and abundant the cattle are well nourished on these 

 pastures; if drought prevails they suffer for food as surely, and 

 often as severely, as did the live stock of England in winter, ages 

 ago. To suffering from scant food there is added the heat of "dog 

 days" and the ever-present annoyance of blood-sucking flies. Our 

 stockmen will never be worthy of their calling, nor their flocks and 

 herds yield their best returns, until ample provision is made against 

 drought-ruined pastures in summer. Every argument in favor of 

 storing provender for stock in winter holds with equal force for pro- 

 viding feed to make good any possible shortage of pastures in summer. 



III. HAY-MAKING. 



236. The quality of young grass. At the Michigan Station 4 

 Crozier cut growing timothy grass 8 times from one plat, while on 



1 U. S. Dept. Agr., Farmers Bui. 147. 8 Bui. 19. 



2 U. S. Dept. Agr., Farmers ' Bui. 300. * Bui. 141. 



