114 MEADOWS AND PASTURES 



rowing, just as one would for a cultivated crop, then 

 furrow in shallow furrows about 3' apart, drop the sods, 

 push them in with the foot and with a drag make the 

 surface smooth again. If afterward the weeds are kept 

 mowed, the Bermuda will within one year make a dense 

 sod. 



Bermuda grass loves intense heat. Frost kills it and 

 freezing the roots is often fatal to it. There are strains 

 hardier than others, and in Oklahoma there seems to 

 have developed a strain of unusual hardiness. It is of 

 little use after frost, as the leaves do not seem to retain 

 their virtues in winter as do the blades of many northern 

 grasses. Nor will it start early in spring ; it awaits warm 

 weather. . 



Bermuda is the bluegrass of the South. It makes a 

 similar but tougher sod. It yields a very great amount 

 of forage on suitable soil. It affiliates well with clovers, 

 especially with little white clover. I feel assured that 

 on a bit of sandy loam alluvial soil in Louisiana set to 

 Bermuda grass and white clover, I have seen more cat- 

 tle, pigs, horses and mules grazed than I have ever seen 

 on a similar area anywhere else in the world. It is not 

 very productive on poor or dry soils, yet it may do more 

 than any other grass would do there. It is a most effi- 

 cient soil binder where there is danger of erosion, and 

 river levees in the South are always sodded as soon as 

 they are completed. It will stand more or less submerg- 

 ence, but.to.be under water for a long time will destroy 

 it. Bermuda grass is little seen north of Tennessee, 

 southern Missouri and Oklahoma, though it is a little in 



