16 FARM GRASSES OF THE UNITED STATES 
laid down, and the field converted into more or less 
permanent pasture after one or two years’ use as 
meadow. 
On account of the usual low yield of old meadows 
and most old pastures, progressive farmers maintain 
that they cannot afford to keep lands permanently in 
grass. This is particularly the case in sections of 
the country where dairying is the leading feature of 
farming, especially where land is high-priced. In 
fact, there is a tendency in some sections to dispense 
with pastures altogether on dairy farms, except for 
the young stock, and to substitute the system of 
green feeding (soiling) instead, because of the greater 
amount of feed that may be obtained from the same 
area by this system as compared with pasturing. 
Whether better results could be obtained from per- 
manent or semi-permanent grass-lands by using such 
mixtures as are used in Europe, instead of depending 
on timothy and clover, as our farmers do, is doubtful, 
for the most highly prized European grasses do not 
thrive well in the Eastern section of the United States. 
The most important grasses of Europe are English and 
Italian rye-grasses, meadow-fescue, timothy, orchard- 
grass, and meadow-foxtail. Of these, timothy is the 
only one that can be said to be important in the real 
grass-growing section of this country. The rye-grasses 
and meadow-foxtail are entire failures (in our timothy 
region), and orchard-grass and meadow-fescue (here 
called English blue-grass) are important only in very 
restricted areas. : 
Much has been written concerning the care of 
meadows in this country, a good deal of it copied from 
