24t WILD PLANTS. 



from the same sack, the one a low, moist, deep soil, 

 the other a dry upland, and in three or four years 

 we shall find the natural herbage of the country 

 spring up, dispute and acquire in part possession 

 of the soil, in despite of the ray-grass sown : in 

 the deep soil, the predominant crop will probably 

 consist of poae, cockfoot, meadow-fescue, holcus, 

 phleum, foxtail, &c. ; in the dry soil it will be 

 dogstail, quaking grass, agrostis, &c., not one spe- 

 cies of which was ever sown by us. It appears 

 that the herbage of our poor thin clay lands is the 

 natural produce of the soil, for every fixed soil 

 will produce something, and would without care 

 always exclude better herbage. Attention and 

 manures, a kind of armed force, would certainly 

 support other vegetation, alien introductions, for a 

 time, but the profit would not always be adequate. 

 In a piece of land of this nature I have suppressed 

 the natural produce, by altering the soil with drain- 

 ing, sheep-feeding, stocking up, and composting : 

 and scabious, carnation grass, mat grass, and their 

 companions no longer thrive ; but if I should re- 

 mit this treatment, they would again predominate, 

 and constitute the crop. 



Most counties seem to have some individual or 

 species of wild plants predominating in their soil, 

 which may be scarce, or only locally found in ano- 

 ther ; this is chiefly manifested in the corn-lands 

 for aquatic or alpine districts, and some other pe- 



