CULTIVATION OF PLANTS. 225 



FLEET, an English farmer, says that he cultivates it largely 

 with success. He sows half a bushel to the acre, with a bushel 

 of rye grass, with spring grain, and he finds that it lasts in the 

 ground until it is permitted to seed. He feeds it constantly 

 it being excellent for sheep and, when suffered to get ahead, 

 wonderfully fed upon by pigs in the autumn. The seed must 

 be fresh, not more than two years standing. It requires a 

 longer period to germinate than the seed of any other agricul- 

 tural plant. 



GRASSES. 



THE most important of the herbage plants of all countries, 

 are the grasses, which are found clothing the surface of the 

 earth in every zone, "attaining generally a greater height, with 

 less closeness at the root in the warm climates, and producing 

 a low, close, thick, dark green nutritive herbage in the cooler 

 latitudes." Many of the grasses, however, are of low nutri- 

 tive and productive powers, and in cultivated grounds are held 

 to be weeds; but some of the less valuable require attention on 

 account of their frequent occurrence, and their peculiar adapta- 

 tion to soils low in the scale of fertility. 



With respect to the general culture of grasses, though no department of agri- 

 culture is more simple in its execution, yet from their nature considerable 

 judgment is required in the design. The creeping-rooted grasses will grow 

 readily on moist soils; but the fibrous rooted species, and especially the more 

 delicate upland grasses, require particular attention as to the soil in which 

 they are sown; for in many soils they will either not come up at all, or die 

 away in a few years. Hence, in sowing down lands to permanent pasture, it 

 is a good method to make choice of those grasses which thrive best in adjoin- 

 ing and similarly circumstanced pastures, for a part of the seed, and to mix 

 with these what are considered the very best kinds. Loudon, p. 887. 



A very judicious writer remarks, that it is a bad system to mix seeds of dif- 

 ferent plants before sowing them, in order to have fewer casts. It is better to 

 sow each sort separately, as the trouble of going several times over the ground 

 is nothing compared to the benefit of having each sort equally distributed. 

 Grass-seeds cannot well be sown too plentifully, and no ecomomy less deserv- 

 ing the name can possibly exist, than the being sparing of grass seeds. The 

 seeds of grain may easily be sown too thickly, but with respect to those of 

 grass, it is scarcely capable of occurring. The smaller the stem, the more ac- 

 ceptable it is to cattle; and when the seeds of some grasses are thinly scatter- 

 ed, their stems tend, as it is called, to wood, and the crop is liable to be infested 

 with weeds. Some think that if ground is well manured, good grasses will 

 come in of themselves. Perhaps so; but how long will it be before that hap- 

 pens? 



Clean seed, and that which is known to be suitable to the soil, should always 

 be sown. For though grasses will gradually come in, no great crop is to be 

 expected the first year, unless it be a crop of rank and useless weeds. And 

 he that misses the first year's crop, loses much, as the longer the land lies, the 

 more compact or bound it will become, and produce the smaller crops. Every 

 farmer should carefully examine his fields that are coming into grass for next 



