206 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



an instance, and we are confident that a hundred fields are 

 damaged for the want of seed where one suffers by being over- 

 stocked. There has been great improvement in the amount of 

 seed sown within the past few years, and some of our best 

 farmers now sow a bushel of redtop, half a bushel of Timothy, 

 and one-eighth of a bushel of clover. This is progress in the 

 right direction. But is this a sufficient variety of seed ? The 

 addition of redtop is a great improvement. Though it does not 

 show itself much the first year, among its more precocious and 

 aspiring neighbors, Timothy and clover, still it fills the lower 

 and vacant places, and as the clover dies out raises its modest 

 and beautiful crest and furnishes a hay of the first quality, 

 especially for neat stock ; and it has the great advantage over 

 Timothy of not suffering so much from not being cut just as it 

 comes to maturity. The long stem of Timothy, as soon as it has 

 served its purpose of conveying nutriment for the production of 

 seed, becomes dry, hard, woody fibre, about as indigestible as 

 an old chestnut-rail ; but redtop thickens up from the bottom, 

 and remains succulent for a long time. There are, however, 

 many other grasses worthy of cultivation besides Timothy and 

 redtop. And here also we should learn a lesson from the 

 variety which naturally grows in our rich and permanent 

 meadows and pastures. An examination of an old rich pas- 

 ture will disclose ten or a dozen, and sometimes even twenty, 

 distinct species of grass growing side by side. These different 

 varieties draw on the soil for different elements of nutrition, so 

 that the exhaustion of any one element is not so great as might 

 be supposed. Motheri Earth is much like a mother hen that 

 scratches no harder for a dozen chickens than she does for one. 

 We should consider it miserable economy to bring up one, two 

 or three chickens under one hen, and it is almost as bad 

 economy to sow only two or three kinds of grass seed. In 

 most of our newly-stocked ground many vacant spaces occur, 

 and though they may seem small, still in the aggregate they 

 amount to a large quantity, and very sensibly diminish the 

 harvest. The grass which does grow may have a more rank 

 growth from luxuriating in so much space, but does not furnish 

 so tender and delicate hay as when it grows more compactly. 

 We have seen fields of Timothy that at a little distance looked 

 as though they might yield a great crop of hay, but when we 

 examined them more closely we found the stems too far apart. 



