482 APPENDIX. 



junct to our meadows in thoroughly covering the ground and thus shad- 

 ing the ground, thereby enriching the soil by preserving its humidity dur- 

 ing the summer. 



I have thus enumerated the more generally known and important 

 grasses grown in Tennessee, and will now close with a short notice of a 

 few others generally known as forage plants, that have played an impor- 

 tant part in the production of animal food, and which hardly belong to 

 the grass family. The millet family, (milium,) although they have here- 

 tofore been useful as a hay-producer in the rotation of crops, being annu- 

 als, and producing large yields per acre, a more general enlightenment 

 and familiarity with agricultural science has numbered their days, and 

 now only grown in cases where dire necessity compels a complete covering 

 f the ground in order to kill out some noxious pest, or where the land is 

 wned by a man that is " non compos mentis." This family comprise 

 Hungarian grass, German or Missouri millet, the old Southern or Egypt- 

 ian millet, Dhoura corn, broom corn orserghum sacharatum and Chinese 

 sugar cane, all of which are great exhausters of soil, by far greater than the 

 profits, possess but little merit as forage plants, and the cultivation of 

 which should be universally condemned by all good agriculturists from 

 the mountains in the east to the waters in the west. 



B. F. COCKRILL. 



Richland stock farm, Feb. 19, 1878* 



GRASSES IN BEDFORD COUNTY. 



SHELBYVILLE, TENNESSEE, BEDFOED COUNTY, January 15, 1878. 

 J. B. Killebrew, Commissioner. 



DEAR SIR I have thought that a description of the grasses grown in 

 this county (Bedford), and the large number of acres that are peculiarly 

 adapted to their growth, would interest you. Soon after this became a 

 county, blue grass was sown on one of the knolls of this county, and 

 about that time it was found growing on a hill called Bald Knob 

 (because it has no timber on it), near Wartrace depot, and on another 

 aear Bellbuckle depot. On a farm then owned by Thos. A. Peacock, 

 Esq., and now by the estate of the late Chancellor Steele, and a little 

 later on the place occupied by our Agricultural Society, as a fair ground, 

 blue grass was sown. From these points blue grass has spread very 

 rapidly, and much has been sown in different parts of the county. 



