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It is impossible to give an historical account of the origin of 

 the Natural Grass-seed trade in Holland; or to establish in what 

 time that trade was started. The fact being, that up till some 

 forty or fifty years ago no concentrated trade was being done in 

 Holland-itself. 



This only can be stated as a fact, that for several generations 

 and long before a more systematic growing of Natural Grass-seeds 

 was either started or even thought of, it was the habit of the 

 poorer classes, to go out in summer and collect wherever such 

 was permitted, either in meadows or in woods or fields, and in 

 accordance with the successive terms at which the various kinds 

 do come to maturity, the different grass-seeds, the agricultural or 

 other value of which was either known or intimated to them 

 through the various agents whose hands these seeds had to pass 

 through before they reached the foreign wholesale-dealer and 

 cleaner. 



And as practically all the agents who were at the time the 

 buyers, first-hand, of these grasses in their rough or partly dressed 

 state, had their social seats as well as their warehouses in Ger- 

 many, just a little beyond the Dutch border, very little was 

 either seen, known or heard by the collectors of either the dress- 

 ing and use of the seeds or of the countries whither they were 

 sold and shipped when cleaned. 



There is still an other reason why, whilst this seed-collecting 

 had been going on for years and years, never in Holland-itself a 

 firm sprang up sooner to establish a sound export-trade; combine 

 the produce of the districts and put up warehouses with a satis- 

 factory plant of machinery: the fact, namely, that the use of the 

 Natural Grass-seeds, though these were fairly well known and appre- 

 ciated by a few of the enlightened seedsmen and farmers, was 

 far from being a universal-one then. The majority of both the 

 trade and farmers followed carefully the steps of their predecessors 

 and the system then prevailing, which prescribed for laying down 

 pasture-land, either permanent or for 2, 3 years' lay, the use of 

 Ryegrasses and Clovers. It was not until men like Peter 

 L a w s o n and others who stood in the foremost ranks where it 

 served to instruct farmers as well as the seed-trade, had pointed 

 to the far greater value of the Natural Grasses for the purpose 

 of laying down permanent pasture, as compared with the system 

 then universally followed, namely the use Ryegrasses and Clovers, 

 that these Natural Grasses by their persistent endeavors, got more and 



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