44 THE GRASSES 



from wise attention to, or unwise neglect of the laws of 

 nature. In the matter in hand these laws are few, simple 

 and easily ascertained. Perhaps they may be embraced in 

 two short sentences, viz : To preserve a good stand of grass 

 it needs to be abundantly fed. Different grasses require 

 different foods. 



If we may judge from the practice that prevails almost 

 universally in Tennessee, farmers do not seem to be aware 

 that pastures or meadows ever need to be manured. If 

 there is a farmer in the State who habitually spreads ma- 

 nure over his pastures or his meadows, he is a rare excep- 

 tion to his class. It cannot be that this neglect comes from 

 ignorance of the fact that every hay crop and every season's 

 grazing extracts from the land an enormous bulk of plant 

 material. 



It is difficult to conceive how any one can fail to see so 

 large a fact. It must be, therefore, that the notion prevails 

 because land laid down in grass does not wash away or 

 run out so rapidly as land under the plow, that therefore it 

 need not to be kept in heart. Such a notion is entirely 

 erroneous.* The roots of the natural grasses are almost 

 entirely fibrous. They descend only a few inches below 

 the surface. Of necessity their food must be obtained in a 

 thin layer of top soil There is no chance for the air with 

 its warmth, or the rain with its moisture to penetrate it, 

 and the ammonia of both air and water is almost entirely 

 out off from the soil. There is, therefore, no source left 

 open to the soil whence it can renew the supply of plant 

 food^ taken off annually, either as hay or depastured by stock. 

 In the latter case some return is made in the droppings. 

 This, however, is never entirely equal either in kind or 

 quality to the materials removed from the soil. But the 

 every-day experience of the farmer is of itself the best proof 

 that can be made, if only he would think of it. Why do 

 farmers say that their meadows have " run out," or that 



