186 P. PRATENSIS, L., JUNE GRASS. 



or oven less of the lierbage, while on pints receiving a large 

 quantity of potash, phosphate of lime, and salts of ammonia, 

 in fact everything that is necessai-y to grow luxuriant grass, it 

 managed to fight its way onward, so that in ten years it was 

 credited with twenty-two per cent of the whole herbage. 



With a still more generous diet, it had to give way to cock's 

 foot [orchard grass], which in turn gave Avay to meadow foxtail. 



Concerning this grass for Kansas, Professor Shelton writes: 

 " What we said five years ago in writing of this grass has been 

 fully borne out by recent experience. It can be grown almost 

 anywhere in the now settled portions of the State. Wo have 

 never failed to secure a good stand, and ultimately a good sod, — 

 even during such very dry seasons as 1875, — when good seed was 

 sown upon Avell prepared land, and at the proper season, which 

 is early in the spring. However, our experience with the grass, — 

 a very extended one by the way, — has convinced us that, for all 

 useful purposes except lawns, in central and western Kansas, 

 this is one of the most worthless of the tame grasses. It starts 

 early in the season, and for a short time yields a small amount of 

 quite inferior feed; but in May it ripens its seed, the grass 

 becomes brown, dry, and fibrous, and in this dormant condition 

 it remain^ until fall, and often until tne following spring. We 

 have invariably found, too, that, in a field containing other sorts, 

 cattle will not touch blue grass until all these others are con- 

 sumed. Moreover, dry Aveather will almost certainly injure blue 

 grass sod seriously, when no damage is sustained by orchard grass 

 and clover growing in the same field. On the other hand, in the 

 eastern portions of the State, particularly in the counties border- 

 ing the Missouri river, we know from personal observation that 

 blue-grass thrives abundantly, and is very profitable grass. 



" We can easily see that this grass possesses great value for a 

 region like Illinois and Kentucky, where winter rains abound, 

 enabling it to make a slow and continuous growth; but the 



