38 HORTUS GRAMINEUS WGBURNENSIS. 



hereafter. In this place the reader's attention is particularly- 

 requested to an effectual and economical mode of obtaining the 

 seeds of those grasses, without which the most valuable pasture 

 cannot be formed. 



To cultivate all these grasses separately, for the sake of ob- 

 taining separate seed of each, will be found too expensive, and, 

 in regard to practical utility, unnecessary. The difficulties which 

 have stood in the way of obtaining the seeds of those grasses, 

 essential as a whole to make the richest quality of pasture, at a 

 reasonable practicable expense and in sufficient quantity for farm 

 practice, have deterred intelligent farmers disposed to make im- 

 provements, from attempting any such on the ordinary practice of 

 returning tillage lands to grass or that of forming new permanent 

 pastures, and from using the only effectual means of improving 

 inferior pastures already formed. Fortunately these difficulties 

 are easily surmounted, and the farmer may obtain all these seeds, 

 at a trifling expense, from his own farm. The following pages- 

 may in a few hours enable him to teach those persons who are in- 

 capable of more laborious duties, or those whom the Poor Laws 

 compel him to support without any return of labour, or benefit to 

 the increase of the produce of his farm, or to the returns of profit 

 which his skill and capital justly demand to collect a sufficiency 

 of the seeds of those essential grasses with which to establish a 



O 



pure stock of plants, that will for ever supply him with those seeds 

 according to his wants. 



The unconquerable propensity of almost every species of the 

 valuable grasses to combine and grow in company with others, 

 renders every attempt to cultivate them singly, for any length of 

 time, impracticable : without at the same time incurring consider- 

 able expense in weeding, separate reaping, harvesting, and win- 

 nowing. 



The above Table shews that the ripening of the seeds of the es- 

 sential grasses takes place at three different periods of the season; or r 

 if they are classed according to the time about which each species 

 ripens its seed, they will form three divisions or groups : the first 

 group, consisting of the earliest species, perfect their seed about 

 the end of June, viz. Anthoxanthum odoratum, Poa angustifolia, and 

 Alopecurus pratensis ; the second, consisting of Festuca ovina, var, 

 hordeiformis, Poa pratensis, Festuca pannonica, Dactylis glamerata, 

 cynosurus cristatus, three varieties of the Lolium perenne, Poa tri- 

 vialis, Festuca glabr a, Vicia sepium, Festuca duriuscula, Poa nervata, 



