92 The Importance of Sowing 



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and the tenant, to whom I have previoTisly alluded, has 

 confirmed my experience, and one day said to me that if 

 he hained, or turned the stock out of, a field sown with 

 the seed of a certain seedsman the grass recovered far 

 more quickly than it did in the case of another field sown 

 with seeds supplied by another seedsman. And this 

 supremacy of one plant over another of the same species 

 is by no means so evanescent as one would be inclined 

 to suppose, though eventually, from climatic causes and 

 the conditions of soil, there would be a tendency for the 

 inferior and superior plants to eventually arrive at 

 similar powers of pitoduction, though this is a point which 

 requires further investigation ; and I am not aware 

 of any experiment having been made with the view of 

 determining how long it would take, say, for cocksfoot 

 plants, grown from the finest New Zealand seed, to 

 approximate to plants grown from the, comparatively 

 speaking, dwarf plants which are natives of .our country, 

 or from the seeds of any other inferior cocksfoot plants. 

 On one occasion, in 1884, 1 gathered cocksfoot seed from 

 plants in this park, and Mr. James Hunter, of Chester, 

 on June 26th, 1885, sowed it in line with New Zealand 

 cocksfoot, American, and seed of German growth. He 

 reported that the last three germinated on July 4th, and 

 the former on July 13th. The Clifton, Park cocksfoot 

 plants were very dwarf, and quite different in habit of 

 growth from the other cocksfoot, and gave a much 

 smaller amount of grass, and yet it is almost certain 

 that the fine New Zealand cocksfoot was the produce of 

 plants very similar to those growing wild in this park. 

 But though plants will, of course, in time improve or 

 decline to the climate and soil they live in, it is probable 

 that many years would elapse before a decided change 

 would occur one way or another. The only means I 

 have of forming an opinion here is in the case of a field, 

 the Lake field, 20 acres — low-lying fiat alluvial land — 

 which was partly sown with seed supplied by a local 

 seedsman, and partly supplied by one of the most 



