48 FARM GRASSES OF THE UNITED STATES 
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There are only about four States of the Union that 
have as much as 50 per cent. of their area improved. 
Whatever may be said of the advisability of keeping 
good arable land in pastures, a great deal of this unim- 
proved land could be made into fairly productive pas- 
ture. In the blue-grass country this can be done by 
clearing off the rubbish, burning the leaves and litter, 
and scattering seed of such grasses as blue-grass, white 
clover, orchard-grass, and redtop. On rough hill land 
on the farm belonging to the Missouri Experiment 
Station, which, during the writer’s schoolboy days, was 
covered by a dense growth of blackjack and postoak 
timber, there are now fine blue-grass pastures made 
in this manner. ‘The productiveness of such pastures 
can be continued by keeping them free from brush and 
weeds. 
WEEDS IN MEADOWS AND PASTURES 
Weeds may be divided into three classes—namely, 
annuals, or biennials, which die root and branch when 
they have made seed; ordinary perennials, which die 
down to the ground in the fall, but the roots of which 
remain alive for several or many years; and perennials 
with creeping, or underground, stems, whose aerial 
stems die at the approach of winter, but whose under- 
ground stems live over. ; 
The way to eradicate an annual or biennial weed is 
to prevent it from making seed. The seeds of some of 
them may live for many years in the soil and send up 
a new crop of weeds annually. If they be cut back 
persistently, so that no new seed is formed, they can 
finally be eradicated. The hardest weeds of this class 
to handle are those which, when cut back, produce seed 
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