346 Transactions.— Botany. 
are feeding thereon, so that these cattle may in the shortest time be ready 
for the market. But the operations of these graziers and farmers will 
necessitate their growing upon their several lands very different species of 
grasses. To the grazier permanency will be a great recommendation in the 
grasses he selects, while to the farmer, although the grasses must be both 
fattening and nutritious, yet he will only require them to be annuals and 
biennials, so that they may not occupy his land more than one or two years 
after sowing. 
But these are not all the conditions necessary in the selection and 
sowing of grasses, it is requisite to choose those that will best suit the 
kind of soil, its topographical situation, annual state of moisture, chemical 
constituents, and many other circumstances, A grass may be very valuable 
when planted on one piece of ground, and nearly worthless when planted 
upon another. The grazier or farmer is often surprised that a grass or 
clover he has seen extolled in books, etc., will not grow upon his land, or if 
it manages to keep itself alive will bear but little herbage, and that little will 
not fatten his live stock, or cause them to grow wool; or a grass may be 
very good of itself, but in the struggle for existence some more vigorous 
grass may overgrow and kill it, as for example, the Holcus lanatus will 
destroy the doob, or any weaker growing grass near it. Therefore it is 
necessary that before any grass or clover is sown, these various conditions 
and many others must be taken into account and attended to, that the best 
results may follow. For there is all the difference between keeping a sheep 
to the acre, or ten, or even more, or one head of large cattle to every five 
acres, or one or two bullocks to every acre, and to fatten them by the time 
they are twenty-four or thirty months old. It is no use purchasing valuable 
short-horn cattle, or Lincoln or Leicester sheep, if the pastures are not what 
they ought to be by the grass growing vigorously and with its chemical 
constituents properly combined, thus producing the largest amount of 
nutritious food, for, as Mr. Bakewell said, **It is the feeding more than the 
breeding that tells." 
further, while one grass will fail to feed, or will not even grow, another 
species in the same place will thrive and bear abundant herbage, and both 
nourish and fatten stock. 
We have lately seen wonder expressed at the rye and other grasses 
affected with the ergot fungus ( Secale cornutum ) and that stock fed thereon 
suffer, This is apparently a great mystery to some, but none to the 
