XI 
BROME-GRASS (Bromus inermis) 
ROME-GRASS (Fig. 34) is one of the few recently 
introduced grasses that have won a perma- 
nent place in American agriculture. Its in- 
troduction is to be credited to the work of the 
State experiment stations and the National Depart- 
_ment of Agriculture. It has been grown by them ex- 
_perimentally for a good many years, but began to 
attract general attention in the early nineties. It was 
at first heralded by enthusiastic seedsmen asa panacea 
for all the ills of the farmer. Without question it is 
the best pasture-grass yet found for the Prairie States 
of the Northwest and Pacific Northwest. On the great 
wheat-producing soils of the sections mentioned it is 
a pasture-grass unequaled in productiveness by any 
other pasture-grass in the country (unless we except 
the Bermuda grass of the South), and surpassed only 
by blue-grass in the quality of its herbage. It is now 
firmly intrenched in the favor of farmers from Kansas 
to the Canadian line and west to the Cascade Moun- 
tains of Oregon and Washington. It is alsoa valuable 
grass for moderately dry uplands in parts of California. 
It is distin¢tly a Northern grass, having never suc- 
ceeded south of the latitude of St. Louis, except at 
high elevations in the Mountain States. Itis perfectly 
hardy, even in Manitoba. In the dry summers of the 
Northern Pacific Coast region (east of the Cascade 
164 
