Curl. — On Grasses and Fodder Plants. 383 



grasses than at present ; they were annuals, or biennials, but from these, 

 Stickney, Pacey, Lawson, and others, by cultivation and management, have 

 produced kinds that they call perennial, and that certainly live on for several 

 years in permanent joastures. The Italians, by carefully saving and sowing 

 the seed under the best conditions, have now established a variety, the seed 

 of which is sold at a high price, and when sown in irrigated meadows, 

 or on sewage farms, gives a yield that is enormous, and so great has 

 been the benefit to British and other farmers, by the improvements 

 made in these two grasses, that without them they could not have 

 produced the same quantity of meat, and could not have obtained a 

 return from their farms and pastures. In America the agriculturists 

 have cultivated and sown some of then- indigenous grasses with the 

 greatest profit and benefit to themselves,— the blue grass {Poa compressa) in 

 Kentucky ; the red-top [Agrostis rubra) in the Western States ; and the 

 Phleiim pratense (timothy, cat-tail, etc.), in the Northern States, — and these 

 have been the principal kinds cultivated, although they had such numerous 

 and excellent grasses to choose from. 



In the Australian colonies the indigenous grasses, although most excel- 

 lent ones are found, are gradually being killed out by injudicious burning 

 and over-feeding of stock not allowing them to seed or reproduce them- 

 selves by a fair rest, and by other bad management will get less abundant 

 each year, and the grasses now being sown will not beneficially supersede 

 them. A few years since, the Hierochloe redolens was one of the best "winter 

 fattening grasses in these districts, and the cattle, sheep, and horses, eagerly 

 sought it out, and fed upon it ; now it is ra^sidly disappearing, and what is 

 left the live stock will soon kill out, as each year it becomes more scarce, 

 and so with many other species here, while in Australia we learn from the 

 writings of Mr, Bacchus, Mr. Bailey, and others, that the kangaroo grass 

 {AntMstiria australis) which used to appear like fields of corn, so vigorous 

 and abundant was it, has now become stunted and is dying out in many 

 parts, and other species also as well as the kangaroo grass ; useless or even 

 noxious weeds are taking the places vacated by the nutritious grasses, yet 

 to prevent such disastrous consequences following the reckless destruction 

 of the indigenous grasses, either these grasses should have been fairly 

 treated, or other suitable ones should have been substituted ; and there are 

 numbers which could be with advantage sown as can be easily proved. For 

 whenever we understand the fuU history and description of a grass grovsdng 

 in any place, or where we can grow and test a grass under experimental 

 culture, it is not difficult to predict and describe its worth. When friends 

 of mine in California desired my advice and assistance to find a grass that 

 Yfould bear the climatic conditions of the hot, dry climate of California, I 



