PASTURE GRASSES. 



While there are over two hundred varieties of grasses cultivated 

 in England for the use of domestic animals, in the occupied terri- 

 tory embraced within the United States there are not more than 

 twenty-five; although there is a much greater diversity of soils, 

 surface configuration, climate and latitude. The grasses constitut- 

 ing our meadows are nearly all derived from the eastern continent, 

 where the abundance of the rich pasture lands teem with a great 

 Variety of nutritious herbage. All the cereals oats, rye, wheat 

 and barley, are indigenous to the old world. Indian corn is the 

 greatest and almost the only valuable cereal contributed by the new 

 world to the old. The great prairies east and west of the Mississ- 

 ippi abound in a charming and luxuriant vegetation, but the supply 

 of food which they afford for the herds grazing upon them, in com- 

 parison to the overwhelming quantity of worthless herbage, is very 

 scanty. Exactly the reverse is the condition of the pastures of the 

 eastern hemisphere, where almost every plant that springs from the 

 surface of the earth is rich in nutritive elements. The situation of 

 Tennessee being midway between the East and West, partakes of 

 both sections. We have in the State many thousands of acres of 

 wild lands, situated not only on the mountain plateau, but on the 

 highlands of the river lands, called with us "Barrens." These 

 Barrens are covered with a dense growth of timber, and in some 

 sections, where they have not been burned off, with undergrowth 

 of various kinds. Where this undergrowth has been burned off 

 by firing the leaves in the fall and winter, the pastures are as fine 

 as are seen anywhere, not excepting the prairies. It is true there 

 are many species of grasses that are worthless, or that are at least 

 of doubtful value, yet enough of them exist there to make them 

 invaluable to the stockgrower. In the fall of the year these grasses 

 4 



