332 MEADOWS AND PASTURES 



No correlation whatever was found between the value 

 of the pasture as shown by the beef and mutton pro- 

 duced, and the botanical character of the herbage. Pas- 

 tures with widely varying proportions of grasses and 

 other plants produced equally good results; while pas- 

 tures with the same percentages of grasses and other 

 plants gave widely different results, according to Hunt. 



In Great Britain it is common to sow such plants as 

 burnet (a plant of the rose family), chicory, (a deep- 

 rooting plant that is supposed to benefit soils by its deep 

 root), yarrow and many others. Of all these we can 

 only render the Scottish verdict, "Not proven." To the 

 writer it would seem that two or three grasses best 

 adapted to a soil, with as many clovers, will commonly 

 give better results than more, and, in fact, the seeding 

 of rare grasses is almost impossible owing to the poor 

 germination of many of the seeds found on the market. 



What Farmers Buy in the Middle West. Men whom 

 I know have sold grass and clover seeds for several years 

 and the following figures, showing what is called for, 

 may prove interesting. They make a specialty of alfalfa 

 seed and advertise it, so it would be misleading to com- 

 pare their sales of alfalfa seed with the sale of other 

 seeds, but excepting that many men buy clover and 

 timothy seeds of their local seedsmen, the list should 

 be in line with the demand. In percentages they sold 

 of red clover, 100; mammoth clover, 32; alsike clover, 

 36; crimson clover, 32; white clover, 6.4; sweet clover, 

 8 (the demand rapidly increasing) ; timothy, 88 ; brome 

 grass, 16; all the fescues, 16; Kentucky bluegrass, 10.4; 

 redtop, 6.4; orchard grass, 6.4; Canada bluegrass, 4.8; 



