vi Preface 



Permanent grass suffers from tlie lack of all the various benefits 

 which come to other farm crops under the rotation systems. Soil 

 covered with a permanent turf gets the minimum amount of 

 exposure to the beneficial actions of the atmosphere, sun, rain, 

 etc. In many cases the available fertility is brought down to the 

 lowest point ; weeds tend to increase up to a certain maximum and 

 more or less defy eradication. Whilst certain types of soil are 

 more adapted for permanent grass production than for any other 

 form of cropping, it is nevertheless true that much of the land now 

 under grass might be brought under arable cultivation with greater 

 profit to the nation. Under a system of alternate husbandry 

 most of the above mentioned defects would be corrected, and a 

 much larger yield of food obtained from a given acreage. 



Although the question of the formation of permanent grass 

 has been dealt with in considerable detail in Part II of this volume, 

 the writer strongly advocates that much less land should be under 

 permanent grass, and a much larger area should be devoted to 

 alternate husbandry in which after all our most valuable fodder 

 grasses can be employed to the best advantage. 



Xotwithstanding the great economic importance of grasses in 

 British Agriculture no suitable text-book on the subject of British 

 Agricultural Agrostology at present exists. Of the works dealing 

 with British grasses which have been published in the past, most 

 have been intended for the professional botanist, and certainly 

 none of them can be said to meet the requirements of the modern 

 student of agriculture. 



The present volume has been written primarily for agricultural 

 students, but at the same time it is hoped that it will be found 

 useful to a much larger section of the community, especially to 

 practical farmers, seed merchants, schoolmasters and students of 

 nature generally. 



All our native species have been described and most of them 

 illustrated, but more attention and greater space has been given 

 to those species which are most abundant or of greatest economic 

 importance in the British Isles. This has been necessary in order 

 to combine general completeness with a book of moderate size. 



In the descriptions particular attention has been given to the 

 foliage and seed characters, and to those points which, though of 



