134 JVOTE8 AND 



and horses require no oats, although hard worked, when they are fed with it. 

 Its increase of produce exceeds that of common'grass land about thirty times, and 

 >t will last from ten to fifteen years. It yields an aftermath, or second crop. 



Curtis, in hib Practical Observations on British Grasses, speaks slightingly of 

 the festuca ovina, and says that it appears to him applicable only to the purpose 

 of making a fine-leaved grass plot, that shall require little or no mowing. On 

 the other hand, -Withering, in his botanical arrangement of all the vegetables na- 

 turally growing in Great Britain, intimates that the superiority of the Spanish 

 and english wool is owing to the abundance of this grass in the hilly pastures 

 where the sheep are kept. 



Curtis has enumerated twenty-five genera, and one hundred and twenty-three 

 species of grasses growing in Great Britain, and has judiciously remarked, that to 

 constitute the herbage of a good meadow there must be a combination of pro- 

 duce, bateablenesa, and early growth. Saleable is altogether an agricultural or 

 provincial term, and he uses it to express cattle's thriving on the food they eat. 



The best grasses of Europe have been neglected, and our indigenous ones have 

 been, in a great measure, overlooked by us. Let our scientific men, our practi- 

 cal men, turn their attention to this and other important branches of husbandry, 

 as yet scarcely noticed, and affording inexhaustible topics for investigation, and 

 let them be encouraged in their labours by the observation of Bacon, that " Vir- 

 gil got as much glory of eloquence, wit, and learning, in the expressing of the oh 

 Starvations of husbandry, as of the heroical acts of JSneas." 



NOTE 36. 



This grass produces a fine perfume, and has the same effect on tobacco as the 

 vanilk beau. It delights in a rich soil, and may be easily cultivated. It is 

 greatly superior, in its odoriferous qualities, to the anthoxantum odoratum, or 

 sweet scented vernal grass, the only one of that kind which grows in England. 

 Cattle are very fond of it, and it must produce the most delicious milk, butter, 

 and butchers' meat. There is, however, great danger of its total extirpation, as 

 it is very scarce. Indeed, the same danger is to be apprehended, and the same 

 fatality lias, no doubt, occurred in other instances. Hudson, on the 6th of Sep- 

 tember, se'nt a boat to sound the Kills between Bergen and Staten Island, and 

 his men on their return reported, that the " lands were as pleasant with grass and 

 dowers, and goodly trees, as ever they had seen, and very sweet smells came from 

 1 This is not now the case. The grazing of cattle, the rooting of swioe, 



