PASTURE CULTURE 11 



much troublesome to clear for the plough. . . . The grass and weeds grow up 

 to a man's face . . . "^^ 



Pasture Plants 



Native Grasses 



The native grasses included a few true grasses together with rushes, sedges, 

 and other genera. Carrier^^ states that wild rye (Elymus sp.) was the most 

 common of the native grasses, although Judd^s says that three species of Andro- 

 pogon, fur^atus, nutans, and scoparius, were native to the intervales of the 

 Connecticut Valley. 



Some writers were quite enthusiastic about the merits of the native grass. 

 "The worst that can be sayd against the meddow-grounds," wrote Wood in 

 1634, "is because there is little edish or after-pasture which may proceede from 

 the late mowings . . . "3" Other contemporary writers, on the other hand, 

 were not nearly so enthusiastic. One of them wrote that the native grass is "so 

 devoid of nutritive vertue, that our beasts grow lousy with feeding upon it."^' 

 Later, in 1747, Jared Eliot observed that, "Where there is no English Grass, it is 

 difficult to make cattle truly fat."^^ Since none of the native species which were 

 first utilized for forage were ever domesticated, one can safely conclude that 

 they were not particularly valuable. 



"English Grass" 



At the time of the first settlements in Massachusetts, a number of good grasses 

 and legumes were being cultivated in England, but, since clean seeds of grasses 

 and clovers were not yet available, the stands were a mixture of many diflferent 

 species, including those of low as well as of high value. Sweepings of chaff from 

 haystacks and haymows were used for seed, and it was in this form that the 

 first "grass" seed was brought into Massachusetts. The expression "English 

 grass" was a collective term regularly used to distinguish the introduced species — 

 which usually included a mixture of blue grasses, rye grasses, bent grasses, fescues, 

 and white clover — from the native grasses. 



One writer speaks "of stocking lands from the gleanings of the floors and 

 mangers of the barn 'where every plant, good and noxious, has left its seeds.' "^s 

 Judd reports that "the farmers of Rhode Island sowed hay-seed with chaff before 

 1647"^^ and also that William Pynchon of Springfield had "30 bushels of hay- 

 seed" brought up the river from Hartford in 1650. According to the same author, 

 "The General Court of Massachusetts by 1670 recognized three sorts of mowing, 

 viz., salt marsh, fresh meadow, and English grass." 



White Clover 



Some of the introduced species became quickly naturalized and spread over 

 wide areas. This was particularly true of white clover, which frequently appeared 

 after land had been cleared and plowed far distant from places where it had been 

 sown. According to Judd, white clover "was abundant in New Jersey in 1684, 

 in New York in 1738 . . . and was observed by farmers in the new towns of 



27judd, Hadley, p. 96. 



^^Lyman Carrier, Beginnings of Agriculture in America (New York, 1923), p. 27. 



29Hadley. pp. 96-97. 



^New England's Prospect, p. 13. 



3lNew England Quarterly, IX, 219. 



^^Field Husbandry, p. 17. 



''Mark Doolittle, Address to the Hampshire, Franklin and Hampden County Agricultural Society 



(Northampton, 1826), p. 12. 

 '^Hadley, p. 362. 



