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the soil with a roller or drag brush. A stand can be secured also by cut- 

 tings of the grass if it is. at once distributed over the land and covered. 



A writer in the Southern Farm Magazine says: "Let the plants be 

 gathered, root and branch, from some patch of ground thickly occupied 

 by them. Let them be shaken free from earth and passed through the 

 cutting-box as though designed for the manger of an animal. Let these 

 giblets of an inch long be sown by hand broadcast before the harrow 

 along with the oats in the spring of the year. Every joint will be as 

 sure to germinate as the seed corn. But the little plants will be too tiny 

 the first year to interfere at all with the cereal crop. The next year the old 

 stubble will have become the Bermuda sod, yielding an almost incredible 

 amount of pasturage and incapable of being grazed out by the severest 

 treatment in the hottest summer drought." 



Seed is rarely sown for two reasons. One is that the seed is expen- 

 sive and sells for $1.00 to $1.25 per pound, and a still, better reason is 

 that the germinating power of the seed obtained from the West Indies 

 is very low. 



When Bermuda grass is once thoroughly rooted it spreads itself with 

 amazing rapidity and soon takes possession of a field. It is extremely 

 difficult to exterminate. It should never be planted on any land intended 

 for tillage as it becomes a very troublesome pest. Shade will ultimately 

 destroy it. A crop of peas sown upon the land for two or three years 

 will do much to exterminate it. Exposure of the roots to winter freezes, 

 which is done by shallow plowing, often destroys it in the latitude of 

 Tennessee. 



Rev. C. W. Howard, a well known writer on grasses, says he has 

 found "no difficulty in destroying it upon the uplands of Georgia by close 

 cultivation in cotton for two years. When not pastured broom grass or 

 briers soon destroy it." He also thinks it very doubtful whether "there 

 is one acre of land in the South thoroughly set with Bermuda grass that 

 is not worth more than any other crop that can be grown on it." 



Dr. C. W. Dabney says: "The Bermuda grass sod, not only in the 

 cotton states, but in Virginia, has proved itself the most fruitful of all 

 pasturage. There are well-known fields, not on superior soil and never 

 fertilized, which are today fattening more than one head of cattle per acre. 

 This will almost equal the blue grass in Kentucky. Some wheat farmers 

 in Virginia have almost surrendered tillage for the sake of cattle rearing 

 upon these Bermuda grass fields, because they have found live stock 

 more profitable than wheat, and their present pursuit free from many vex- 

 ations. The farmers upon the red-wheat lands of Virginia report that 

 Bermuda grass can be entirely dispossessed by turning it under and keep- 

 ing it constantly under the plow for two or three years. In this case they 

 advise, after taking off the wheat crop in June, to plow the stubble under 

 and sow the field in peas. In September the peas are turned under as a 

 fallow crop and the field resown in wheat. After two or three summers 

 of this double cropping, which should yield profitable returns in itself, 

 Bermuda grass will be found to be extirpated by the shade of the pea 

 vines while the enrichment of the soil still continues." 



For the making of hay Bermuda is held in high esteem in all those 



