168 FARM GRASSES OF THE UNITED STATES 
or may not be true, but it shows that grass problems 
are not pressing in that section. Yet it is probably 
true that brome-grass would add much to the produc- 
tiveness of pastures, even in Ohio. J. E. Wing, the 
well-known agricultural writer and lecturer, whose 
farm is in west central Ohio, says that a mixture: of 
brome-grass and alfalfa will carry six times as much 
stock there as blue-grass, and doit better. Yet both 
of these crops are, or were until very recently, nearly 
unknown in that State. Alfalfa is now rapidly gain- 
ing favor throughout the timothy region, and it is 
probable that brome-grass will, in time, do the same 
over much of this region. 
It has been stated on a previous page that palata- 
bility is perhaps the most important single character- 
istic of a grass. If stock like it sufficiently well to eat 
enough to fatten on, it deserves attention. It is not 
claimed that brome-grass is as palatable as blue-grass, 
but the former is eaten readily by all classes of stock, 
and its superior productiveness would render it more 
profitable than blue-grass in all sections except those 
where blue-grass is at its best, such as the Blue- 
Grass Region of Kentucky, north Missouri, and south- 
western Iowa. Since brome-grass is more a pasture than 
a hay grass, and as the farmers of the eastern part 
of the timothy region are gradually abandoning the 
use of pastures in favor of more productive methods of 
raising feed, it is doubtful if brome-grass has an im- 
portant place to fillin that section. But farther west, 
where beef production renders pastures necessary, it 
would undoubtedly add to the profit of the farmer. 
_ Brome-grass was at first heralded as a great hay- 
