59 



keep up their flesh when permitted to run on it during the winter months 

 without other food. When snow falls, however, cattle will have to be 

 fed, but horses, mules and sheep will paw off the snow, unless it is too 

 deep and get at the grass. It is the first grass that puts forth its leaves 

 in the spring. Good fat lambs can be sent into the market earlier than 

 from any other grass. It makes milk rich in butter, and gives the latter 

 a fine golden color without injuring its taste, or, like clover, imparting its 

 peculiar flavor to it. 



While blue grass is the most valuable of all grasses for those portions 

 of Tennessee where the soils are adapted to its growth it is too true that 

 many farmers living in those sections show a total indifference concern- 

 ing its cultivation. A farm well set in blue grass will yield a return per 

 acre of from $10 to $15 for grazing purposes alone. With such profits 

 from its growth it would seem that every farmer in the state would 

 hasten to sow it. Many do not because they are unacquainted with the 

 best system for its management. In its nutritive elements it ranks very 

 high. Recent tests show that while timothy contains 4*/j per cent, of 

 albuminoids; orchard, G, 1 -^ per cent., red top, G% per cent., blue grass 

 contains 8 per cent. These results vary with grasses grown on different 

 soils, time of harvesting and methods adopted in curing. 



A standard bushel of seed weighs 14 pounds. 



It is the very best grass grown for lawns and yards. A good sod of 

 it with proper care will last for centuries. It will withstand, under favor- 

 able conditions, all the vicissitudes of the weather, the heat of summer, 

 the cold of winter, parching droughts and sweeping floods. 



It forms the greatest attraction of a country home. It is the ground- 

 work of all natural and artificial decorations. Without this grass the 

 shade is not half so grateful nor the flowers half so beautiful. For the 

 embellishment of yards it is the best of all grasses. Wherever blue grass 

 flourishes homes are more inviting and beautiful; lands are more valuable 

 and in greater demand; the people are more intelligent and cultivated, 

 have a nobler bearing and a higher sense of honor, become more highly 

 educated; domestic animals are better bred and of higher types, both for 

 beauty of form and for profitable marketing. In blue grass regions there 

 is more wealth, greater taste, more real contentment, a larger hospitality, 

 more ease and luxury, better society and fewer paupers, less worry, less 

 enervating labor, more charming surroundings and happier families.. 



Blue grass is nature's sweetest smile; it is God's benediction; it helps 

 to support us in life; it cheers us on our way by its freshness and beauty 

 and it covers our last resting place with its perennial mantle of green, at 

 once the emblem of life, of resurrection and of immortality. 



