294 GRASSES AND HOW TO GROW THEM. 



and the rushes and sedges which grow around the edges 

 of certain lakes on the one hand, and the redtop and 

 blue joint grasseS on the other. 



Preparing the Soil. — ^While nature sows wire grass, 

 the sowing can only prove effective where the conditions 

 are favorable to the sowing of the grass. Where the 

 watery saturation is excessive, as in muskegs or in cer- 

 tain shallow lakes, the waters must be lowered by na- 

 ture or by man. In settled states, recession in the 

 waters advances with the advance of cultivation into 

 lands not previously tilled, hence, the growths men- 

 tioned, as preceding wire grass are gradually being sup- 

 planted by the same. Particularly is this true of peat 

 bottomed lakes. ^Mien the recession advances beyond a 

 certain degree, the wire grass fails to be supplanted 

 in turn by blue joint or redtop. These changes made 

 by nature are slow. In many instances, it is possible 

 to hasten them, as when the outlets of these watery sit- 

 uations are of such a character that the waters may be 

 in part drawn off. When thus lowered sufficiently, 

 fire may be made to run over the surface of the mus- 

 keg in the spring, while the frost is still near the sur- 

 face to kill the tea bushes and bum the moss. If this 

 were done in the dry autumn, the fire would burn down 

 into the peat. With the bushes dead and the moss burn- 

 ed, nature does the rest. Where she gets seed enough 

 to sow whole marshes so as to transform them into 

 meadows in two or three seasons is in a sense one of the 

 mysterious things. Equally mysterious is the source of 

 the seed supply, which, under certain conditions, will 

 transform a wire grass meadow, in a few seasons, into 



