PREFACE 



TO THE FIRST EDITION. 



T HAVE dedicated this book to my late really-to- 

 J- be-lamented friend, Mr. Faunce de Laune of 

 Sharsted Court, Kent, because I, in common with 

 a vast number of landowners and farmers, owe 

 him a great deal of gratitude for having, in his 

 article "On Laying Down Land to Permanent 

 Pasture,"* been the means of calling attention to 

 the once deplorable condition of the British seed 

 trade. This is sufficiently exemplified by a single 

 quotation from the article alluded to, and in which 

 Mr. De Laune says : — " I found that, however 

 careful I was in my orders, and from whatever 

 seed merchant I ordered my seed, the per centage 

 of ryegrass, soft woolly grass, and other bad 

 grasses and weeds, was beyond all belief." My 

 own experience, I am sorry to say, was the same 

 as that of Mr. De Laune's, and in some cases a 

 botanist I employed could not discover a single 

 plant of some of the more valuable grasses the 

 seeds of which I supposed I had put down, and 



* Journal of Royal Agricultural Society of England. Part I., 

 No. XXXV. 1882. 



