DIFFERENT KINDS OF FOOD. 75 



and taste, hard and crisp stem, and is generally mixed with 

 some of the artificial grasses, as clover. Its colour varies 

 according to the way in which it has been prepared, though it 

 rather inclines to green. In good upland hay the flowering 

 heads of the grasses should be plentiful. Meadow hay is long, 

 the steins rather hard, though in indifferent samples they may 

 be soft. Compared with upland, it is coarser, darker in colour, 

 and the aroma stronger, but this generally depends upon its 

 preparation ; the taste, owing to the coarseness of some of the 

 grasses, is not so sweet. It generally contains a number of 

 other plants besides the grasses. 



It may be mentioned that the water-meadow hay is hard, 

 long, coarse, and tasteless, without aroma, and full of water- 

 plants. It is a very poor feeding material. 



The value of hay depends much upon the mode of growth 

 and the time at which it is cut, as well as the way in which 

 it is preserved. 



That made from grasses growing in sheltered places as 

 under trees and hedges is insipid, and little worth as food ; 

 and all hay cut too late after it has seeded is less nutritious 

 than when cut at the proper time. 



The best hay is one year old, of a rather greenish tint, firm 

 and long, clean, sweet to the taste, and of a pleasant charac- 

 teristic odour. An infusion from it (hay tea) should be of a 

 good dark colour ; in the truss, flowers are found in it which 

 still retain more or less of their tint. A large variety of good 

 grasses are contained in it, and an abundance of flowering- 

 heads. 



Hay of medium quality, if old, is tasteless, brittle, and 

 dusty \ or if affected in quality from other causes, is short and 

 fine, deficient in variety of grasses ; or short, coarse, and dark 

 in colour, odourless, taste perhaps pungent, and weeds some- 

 times present. 



Hay of bad quality is mouldy, brittle, bad-smelling, perhaps 



