OLD PASTURE SWARD. 275 



or an extensive destruction of the plants ; for, if we take 

 nature for our guide, we shall not find anything like that 

 amount of plants on an inch or a foot of our grass lands. 

 Let us see, from a very careful trial, how many plants 

 and how many species are to be found in a square foot. 



These plants, in each instance, were counted with the 

 utmost care, by a farmer now living in Massachusetts, 

 then in the employ of Mr. Sinclair, and the correctness 

 of his results may be relied on. 



Now, it is a well-known fact that the sward of a rich 

 old pasture is closely packed, filled up, or interwoven, 

 with plants, and no vacant spaces occur. Yet we see, 

 from the above table, in a closely-crowded turf of 

 such a pasture, only one thousand distinctly-rooted 

 plants were found on a square foot, and these were 

 made up of twenty different species. They are seen in 

 Table X. 



The soil should be supplied with a proper number of 

 plants, else a loss of labor, time, and space, will be in- 

 curred ; but, however heavily seeded a piece may be 

 with one or two favorite grasses, small vacant spaces 

 will occur, which, though they may not seem important 

 in themselves, when taken in the aggregate will be 

 found to diminish very considerably the yield of an acre. 

 Undoubtedly some allowance should be made for the 

 seeds and young plants destroyed by insects, birds, and 

 various accidental causes ; but, even after all deductions 

 for these, we see that there is no deficiency in the 

 quantities of seed used, and the imperfectly covered 

 ground cannot be explained in this way. 



The above table is also important as an illustration 

 of the truth of my general proposition. It shows that 

 in those pastures where few species were found to- 

 gether, whether in old, natural pastures or in artificial 

 meadows, the number of plants on a given space was 



