VIRGINIA LYME GRASS. 95 



feeding value and palatabillty as it gets woody and the basal leaves 

 soon dry up and turn brown. If intended for pasture it should 

 therefore be grazed early, and if grown for hay it should be cut 

 quite green — long before the plants have started to flower. Its 

 value as a pasture or hay grass is considerably lessened by its inability 

 to produce a reasonable second growth. 



When sown alone, fifteen pounds of seed should be used to the 

 acre. 



The strain on the soil will be an easy one by alternating the crops, provided only that you are not 

 chary in saturating the parched earth with rich manure, or in scattering unsightly ashes upon the 

 exhausted fields; thus, too, your land is refreshed by changing the crops, and in the meantime there is 

 not the unproductiveness of untilled land. — ^Virgil, Georgics, zi B.C. 



Where cattle may run about roving at will, 

 From pasture to pasture, poor belly to fill. 

 There pasture and cattle, both hungry and bare, 

 For wamt of good husbandry worser do fare. 



— ^Thomas Tusser, Five Hundrelh Pointes of Husbandrie, 1557, 



The calicular leaves enclose the tender flowers, and the flowers themselves lie wrapped about the 

 seeds, in their rudiment and first formations, which being advanced, the flowers fall away; and are 

 therefore contrived in variety of figures, best satisfying the intention; handsomely observable in 

 hooded and gaping flowers, and the butterfly blooms of leguminous plants, the lower leaf closely 

 involving the rudimental cod, and the alary or wingy divisions embracing or hanging over it. — Sir 

 Thomas Browne, The Garden of Cyrus, 1658. 



And tryed time yet taught me greater thinges ; 



The sodain rising of the raging seas, 

 The soothe of byrdes by beating of their winges, 



The powre of herbes, both which can hurt and ease; 

 And which be wont t'enrage the restless sheepe. 

 And which be wont to worke eternal sleepe. 



— Spenser, Shepherd's Calendar, 1579. 



Some of the Ancients, and likewise divers of the Modern Writers, that have labored in Natura 

 Magick, have noted a Sympathy between the Sun, Moon, and some principal Stars; and certain 

 Herbs, and Plants. And so they have denominated some Herbs Solar, and some Lunar, and such like 

 toys put into great words. It is manifest, that there are some Flowers that have respect to the Sun 

 in two kinds; the one by opening and shutting, and the other by bowing and inclining the Head, 



Of this, there needeth no such solemn Reason to be assigned, as to say, that they rejoyce 



at the presence of the Sun, and mourn at the absence thereof. For it is nothing else but a Httle loading 

 of the Leavs, and swelling them at the bottom, with the moisture of the Air; whereas the dry Air 

 doth extend them. And they make it a piece of the wonder, That Garden Claver will hide the Stalk, 

 when the Sun sheweth bright, which is nothing but a full expansion of the Leavs. — Bacon, Natural 

 History, 1625. 



