ON THE CULTIVATED GRASSES 



CHAPTER I. 



WHICH TREATS OF THE INTRODUCTION AND CULTIVATION 

 OF SPECIES AND VARIETIES. 



THE Culture of Plants, for the food of domestic herbivorous animals, has always been 

 confined to nations distinguished by advancement in the practice of agriculture, 

 and the other arts attendant on civilisation ; thus, we find that branch of hus- 

 bandry to have been successfully practised by the Romans in the first century ; and in the 

 sixteenth it was carried on extensively in the Low Countries then alike famous for agri- 

 culture, manufactures, and commerce whence it was, about the middle of the seven- 

 teenth century, introduced to Britain, where its practice may be said to have served as an 

 index to determine the progressive advancement of agriculture from that to the present 

 time. It is therefore hoped that the following short outline of its history may not be 

 deemed entirely devoid of interest. 



Although the Egyptians, Jews, Greeks, and other eminent nations of antiquity, 

 bestowed considerable care on the culture of the cereal grains, pulse, flax, and various 

 other plants, the products of which conduced to the alleviation of their personal wants, by 

 affording either food or clothing ; and although the possession of flocks and herds was, 

 among many of those nations, deemed indicative both of power and honour, yet it does 

 not appear that the cultivation of plants for the exclusive purpose of feeding cattle was prac- 

 tised prior to the period when Rome swayed the sceptre over the greater part of the then 

 known world when her warriors and senators enjoyed, in the culture of their lands, re- 

 laxation from the dangers of the battle-field, or the cares of the state; and when, accord- 

 ing to an eminent agricultural writer of that age, " the earth delighted to be ploughed with 

 a share adorned with laurels; and by a ploughman who had been honoured with a 

 triumph." Then, in the times which immediately preceded the decline of that mighty 

 empire, the Romans not only grew wheat, far or spelt, barley, beans, etc., for bread, but 

 they also cultivated Lucern, Red Clover, Vetches, Lupines, Fenugreek, and other 

 leguminous plants, which they used both in a green and a dried state for feeding their live 

 stock; and for a like purpose they also employed the turnip and rape; while their horses 

 and working oxen were further regaled with the ripened seeds of the cerealia, as well as 

 those of the bean, pea, and other leguminosae. But throughout the barbarous ages which 

 succeeded the ruin of the Roman empire, it may, in the absence of any definite informa- 

 tion, be safely inferred that, with the decline of agriculture, and the useful arts generally, 

 that portion in the practice of the former which alone tended to supply the wants of the 



