80 The Ryegrass Controversy. 



Laune had not gone back to Sinclair to find out the truth, I fear 

 we should still have been pretty much where we were twenty 

 years ago." " J- H." 



" July 27th, 1896." 



Taking into consideration the controversy about rye- 

 grass that has raged in recent years, Arthur Young's 

 remarks on this grass and cocksfoot are very interesting. 

 Sir Mordaunt Martin, he tells us, found cocksfoot much 

 more profitable than ryegrass. It grew in midsummer 

 when everything else was burnt up. It was cultivated in 

 Norfolk and Suffolk with great success instead of rye- 

 grass. Young recommended it widely in consequence of 

 its earliness, largeness of produce, and yielding an ample 

 rouen (aftermath). He quotes a Hampshire farmer who, 

 in 1812, asserted that since cocksfoot had been substi- 

 tuted for ryegrass 100 additional sheep had been kept on 

 his farm. of 240 acres. When recommending cocksfoot. 

 Young says " that the exclusive attention that has been 

 given to ryegrass has proved in a thousand instances 

 most prejudicial." 



Curtis, in his '' Practical Observations on the British 

 Grasses," 4th Edition, London, 1805, says : — 



" Ray-Grass (or ryegrass) still continues to be the only grass 

 whose seeds can be purchased for the purpose of laying down 

 meadow and pasture land ; and how inadequate that grass is, for 

 such a purpose, is known to every intelligent farmer. Why, 

 indeed, the LoUum perenne should originally have been made use of, 

 in preference to all the other grasses, cannot, perhaps, be satis- 

 factorily accounted for ; most probably it 'owes its introduction 

 to accident, or to its being a common grass whose seeds were 

 easily collected, rather than to its being preferred from any 

 investigation of its merits compared with the others. However 

 this may be, there appears to be no reason for excluding the 

 others — ^for it would appear exceedingly improbable, that, of 

 upwards of a hundred grasses growing wild in this country, the 

 Author of Nature should have created one only as suitable to 

 be cultivated for pasturage or fodder." 



