164 GRASSES AND HOW TO GROW THEM. 



river bottoms, made up of alluvial soils considerably 

 tempered with clay. After these would probably come 

 the humus soils of the prairie, and the loam soils of 

 the same. Then would come clays and after these, 

 sandy loams. It will do well in the sandy soils of river 

 bottoms when enough moisture is present. While it 

 will grow well on certain of the sandstone soils of the 

 south, so deficient in lime as not to maintain blue grass 

 in good form, it will grow much better on the deep cal- 

 careous soils of the same. It is one of the best grasses 

 to grow on thin soils, and it will even grow, though in 

 a dwarfed form, on poor gravelly soils*. No other use- 

 ful grass would seem so well adapted for being grown 

 in wet situations, even in places so moist, as to be sat- 

 urated with water for a considerable portion of the late 

 autumn and the early spring. It will even stand shal- 

 low submergence for several days, when the weather is 

 cool; and for a longer period than almost any other 

 useful grass, when it is warm. But it does not stand 

 drought as well as Russian brome grass or some of the 

 wheat grasses. 



Place in the Rotation. Red Top usually requires 

 several years to become "set," that is, to form a sod as 

 dense as it can become under the attendant conditions 

 of growth, consequently it is not a good rotation plant ; 

 and yet it would not be correct to say that there is no 

 place for it in rotations. But that place is more on 

 uplands than in reclaimed marshes, since in the soils 

 of the latter it is more abiding than on uplands. Speak- 

 ing in a general way, on these and in fact on all soils, it 

 is helpful in bringing humus to them, and, because of 



