184 EARLY CULTURE OF GRASSES 



grass, <fcc. ; and in 1769 the same society offered addi- 

 tional rewards for further investigations and experi- 

 ments on the culture and comparative value of the 

 natural grasses. But little was done, however, till the 

 experiments at Wobnrn Abbey, in 1824. 



In this country the extensive and practical cultiva- 

 tion of the natural grasses seems to have been com- 

 menced at an earlier date than in England ; for Jared 

 Eliot, writing about the year 1750, speaks of the cul- 

 ture of Timothy as having been adopted some time 

 previously. Indeed, the necessities of our rigorous 

 climate compelled attention to this branch of husbandry 

 soon after the establishment of the Plymouth colony, in 

 the year 1620. 



The climate of England, on the other hand, admitted 

 a greater degree of reliance on the wild luxuriance of 

 nature, while the culture of the grains gave a suffi- 

 ciency of coarse straw, which formed the winter sus- 

 tenance for stock till the modern improvements in 

 farming introduced a better system. This mode of 

 management was brought over to this country by the 

 first settlers, and attempted for some time; the few cat- 

 tle they had being kept on poor and miserable swale hay, 

 or often upon the hay obtained from the salt marshes. 

 The death of their cattle from starvation and exposure 

 was of very common occurrence, and not unfrequently 

 the farmer lost his entire herd. The treatment of ani- 

 mals now as they were treated during the whole of the 

 first century of the colony, would be an evidence of 

 inhumanity which could scarcely be tolerated in any 

 community. This treatment was in part, at least, owing 

 to the poverty of the settlers, and more, probabty, to 

 the ideas and practices in which they had been early 

 trained in a different climate. Fortunately for the most 

 useful of our domestic animals, a more enlightened pol- 



