104 COMMITTEES EEPOKT UPON CHESS. 



Nothing more clearly illustrates the want of accurate 

 knowledge of subjects intimately connected with agri- 

 culture, and immediately affecting the farmers' interests, 

 than the more recent history of the propagation of 

 this worthless pest to our grain-fields. It was, within 

 the memory of many farmers who suffered from it, 

 heralded in the papers, in connection with the names of 

 distinguished friends of agriculture, with the earnest 

 hope that it might receive extended trials. Monstrous 

 prices were charged and paid by the farmer for its seed, 

 in many cases four and five dollars a bushel, a pledge 

 being exacted that it should not be allowed to go to 

 seed. Committees of agricultural societies were in- 

 vited to examine and report upon it ; and in a letter 

 now lying before me, the disinterested propagator very 

 kindly offers to put up ten barrels of bromus-seed for 

 one hundred dollars, saying that " of course the earliest 

 applicants will be sure of obtaining till all is gone, 

 which would scarcely give a barrel to a state. * * 

 Years must elapse before the country can be supplied 

 as it now is with Herd's grass and clover seed. My 

 offer invites cooperation and participation in the profits 

 and pleasures now available " — for taking advantage 

 of the honest credulity of the public? 



A quantity of bromus-seed was sent to the State 

 Farm of Massachusetts, for the purpose of experiment, 

 with a letter with directions to sow with clover, in the 

 spring of 1855. The crop was cut while yet green, and 

 before the graks had developed sufficiently to distinguish 

 it with certainty. The following year directions were 

 given to let it stand later in the season. While engaged 

 in the collection and study of specimens, in the course 

 of the summer of 1856, 1 gathered samples of the grass 

 when it was still immature, the spikelets having pre- 

 cisely the form indicated in Fig. 79. Without giving it 



