CHAPTER VIII. 



ERADICATION OF THE WEEDY GRASSES. 



The grass family includes a large number 

 of our most useful plants, such as corn, 

 wheat, oats, barley, and all the forage 

 grasses, and is the most valuable of all the 

 great botanical divisions. On the other 

 hand, it includes some of our most trouble- 

 some weeds, which, because of the persist- 

 ence of their creeping root-stocks, as in 

 quack grass, or the similarity of their 

 growth and seed habits to the cereals in 

 which they grow, as with wild oats, or for 

 some other reason, are very troublesome to 

 the farmer and very difficult to eradicate. 



The three most troublesome grasses to 

 the farmers of Canada and the northern 

 United States are quack grass, wild oats, 

 and foxtail. Wild barley or squirrel-tail 

 grass is also a very serious weed pest in 

 prairie pastures and meadows, but one 

 which rather quickly succumbs to cultiva- 

 tion. On land that cannot be cultivated, 



