FARMER'S BOOK OF (TRASSES 45 



and enjoyment are doubled by the animal food so much craved 

 by hogs and furnished by these worms in ample supply. The 

 pigs literally revel among the tender grass and tender luscious 

 worms as the human animal delights in his green peas, mutton 

 and fat oysters in March and April. 



Treating this grass from an agricultural stand point I need 

 only mention its utility in binding together and holding levees 

 of sand and loose soil against floods of water, its preventing lands 

 from washing and its filling gullies, in all which its value is 

 inestimable. 



Mr. Howard in his manual gives the views of Col. Lane, who 

 states that thirty years before, he had purchased an old planta- 

 tion cheap because infested in places with this grass. He per- 

 mitted a man to occupy thirty acres of it five or six years. The 

 man had a cow and calf, sow and pigs, and a brood mare. He 

 cultivated a little corn never making enough to feed his fami- 

 ly. For the increase of live stock in this short time grown on 

 this grass almost wholly, Col. L. offered him $1,000. To show 

 the value of this grass as a fertilizer, Col. L., after the man left, 

 cultivated this thirty acres of land. "The first crop, cotton, 

 half stand, owing to the mass of undecomposed sod, eighteen 

 hundred pounds of seed cotton per acre. Second crop, cotton, 

 two thousand eight hundred pounds seed cotton per acre. Third 

 crop, corn, sixty-five bushels per acre corn manured with cot- 

 ton seed. Fourth crop, wheat, forty -two bushels per acre. The 

 average product of this land without the sod, would have been 

 not more than one hundred pounds of seed cotton, fifteen to twen- 

 ty bushels of corn, and eight to ten of wheat. I know of no 

 crop that will improve land more, and certainly none that will, 

 at the same time, give so large an income with so little labor." 



Mr. Howard gives equally strong testimony from others. 

 And I have seen commons set with this grass, on which hun- 

 dreds of cattle, horses, hogs, sheep and goats were running con- 

 stantly the year round, mowed year after year and the hay sold 

 for two to four times as much as any cultivated crops produced at 

 five times the cost in the vicinity on similar land could be sold 

 for. 



But this grass has its disadvantages too and sometimes no doubt 

 kills pigs and possibly other young animals. If not frequently 

 grazed or mowed during summer, the stems become hard, wiry, 

 and full of indigestible woody fibre in the fall. This sometimes 

 becomes impacted in the bowels of young animals and thus 

 kills them. To make good pasture it must be kept well trod- 

 den and grazed to keep it tender, digestible and nutritious 

 and to suppress othar objectionable grasses and weeds ; other- 

 wise broom grass, briers and other weeds will in a few years de- 

 stroy it. 



