QUANTITY OF GRASS SEED TO AN ACRE. 161 



quantity of seed for this will vary in different soils a very rich, 

 deep soil needing less than a more sterile one, because in the 

 latter the roots cannot extend far enough to collect the requisite 

 food and drink to make a large, strong, open stool, and more 

 herbage will grow upon the same space by having the stools 

 stand closer. 



In some degree proportionately to the closeness of the fibre 

 and the fineness of the grass, will be its nourishing quality, so 

 that ninety pounds of fine, close-grown hay, from a thick-seeded 

 meadow, may be of equal value with a hundred pounds of a 

 coarser, ranker quality. But the nourishment is by no means in 

 the inverse ratio of size ; so that for all ordinary purposes, with 

 all the usual hay-grasses, the farmer will find his profit in study- 

 ing to obtain the largest burthen of grass. For this end, I am 

 inclined to think English farmers often sow too much seed 

 Americans not enough. It seems, however, to be the best farmers 

 in other respects that sow the most seed in England. 



There is one consideration that I have omitted to mention, 

 against the common practice on American farms, where hay is an 

 important staple crop : it is generally an object to retain a clean 

 sward of grass as long as possible, without the necessity of 

 breaking up, from the grass having run out, that is, given place 

 to weeds, or to finer and less profitable grasses. Where the seed 

 has been thickly sown, the grass takes more entire possession of 

 the surface, and retains it longer. The thicker grass seed is 

 sown, therefore, other things being equal, the longer it will lay. 



I have known, in a district where it was the custom to sow 

 four to eight quarts of timothy seed, on two occasions, twenty 

 quarts sowed. The result was a finer grass in both cases ; in one 

 it was thought the crop was much larger, and in the other that it 

 was somewhat smaller, than where ten quarts was sowed along- 

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