284 MEADOWS AND PASTURES 



grass, as timothy. A second choice for good soil and 

 plenty of moisture is timothy. For wet soil and lime- 

 deficient but yet fairly good, sow timothy and redtop. 

 For pasture or meadow in the Northwest, sow brome 

 grass and meadow fescue.^ For pasture and meadow in 

 Kansas and Nebraska, sow timothy, brome grass and 

 meadow fescue. For winter pasture or temporary lawn 

 in the South, sow Italian rye grass, and so on through 

 the list. The reader, after studying the chapters de- 

 scribing the various grasses, will have little difficulty in 

 making out his own mixture or choosing a single grass 

 to sow alone. 



Mixtures vs. One Grass. Hunt says that no mixture 

 will afford more forage than will a single grass sown 

 alone, if it is adapted to the soil and climate. While 

 there is doubtless exaggerated expectation of the effi- 

 ciency of mixtures, I must say I have seen evidence that 

 mixtures for pastures are good in their way. The evil 

 of a mixture is that sometime there is in it a grass of 

 inferior quality ; that one will be neglected and the others 

 grazed, so that after a time the inferior grass is left 

 in the ascendency. Thus it is folly to mix brome grass 

 with orchard grass or bluegrass with orchard grass, since 

 animals commonly leave orchard grass untouched when 

 they can gnaw the more delicate grasses, and yet orchard 

 grass is nutritious and palatable and eaten w r ell when 

 growing alone. When one is not sure of one's soil one 

 may find that in the "shotgun mixtures" of many seeds 

 one will find some that will be especially well adapted, 

 and thus achieve better results than if one seeded at a 

 venture one grass alone. For hay one must bear in mind 



