169 



valuable, and are full as easy to be separated. It makes a most excel- 

 lent turf on sound rich land, where it will remain," — ^but on the follow- 

 ing page he adds : " many are tempted by the facility of procuring the 

 seeds of this grass to lay down grounds near their houses, where they 

 want to have a fine turf with it ; for which purpose, unless the soil 

 be very rich, a worse grass cannot be sown, as it will certainly die off 

 in a very few years entirely." 



Swayne, the author of the ' Gramina Pascua,' as quoted by Wither- 

 ing, observed, " there was reason to think that the common cultivated 

 Eay-grass had by constant sowing degenerated from its natural qualities, 

 that it was inferior in many respects to the Kay-grass growing naturally 

 in our best meadows and pastures. Mr. Pacey, an enlightened agri- 

 culturist, in the upper part of this county (Staffordshire), has lately 

 raised a variety of Ray-grass from seed selected from old pastures, and 

 has now multiplied it to that extent as to sell annually a considerable 

 quantity at the price of 10s. 6d. per bushel. It has been proved by the 

 most competent judges to be infinitely superior to the cultivated Ray- 

 grass, and he has a demand for all he raises. What," he adds, " can 

 be the cause of the degeneracy of the cultivated sort?" 



The foregoing remarks, from writers of the past century, are sufficient 

 to show that similar disappointments to those now in store for the care- 

 less cultivators of this grass prevailed among the experimental farmers 

 of that period, and induced the more scientific to enquire into their 

 causes and endeavour to rejnedy them. The introduction of the Pacey 

 grass, as it is still called, was a grand move in the earlier career of 

 agricultural improvement ; and the sale of the seed in large quantities 

 at the recorded price probably well remunerated its spirited producer. 

 A strong proof of its value is, that among the numerous other varieties 

 to which the attention of the farmer has since been directed, Pacey's 

 grass stiU maintains a high position. The varieties in question, in- 

 cluding those of natural growth, are not much under seventy. 



The liability to degenerate, at first mysterious, or incapable of being 

 accounted for, is now no longer so ; systematic enquiry and observation 

 have solved the question. No grass so rapidly impoverishes the soil, 

 or rather takes from it that which is necessary to its own support to an 

 extent equally prejudicial to its future growth ; and when the nutriment 

 in question is exhausted, it dwindles and dies off. Why one variety 

 should endure only a single year, while another fiourishes five or six, 

 cannot be positively determined; though enquiry would probably 

 explain the phenomenon as dependent upon certain constitutional differ- 

 ences which, at first induced by peculiar circumstances, are retained 

 from generation to generation, lite the varied habits, forms of disease, 

 and other idiosyncracies appertaining to families and races in the 

 animal kingdom. 



Analyses are wanting to show the relative proportions of nutritive 

 proximate elements, as starch, sugar, mucilage, &c., in the different 

 varieties of Lolium perenne ; but it is certain that those proportions are 

 greater in the semi-annual, or short-lived and quickly-assimilating 

 kinds, than in those of slower growth and longer duration. In adopt- 

 ing any general comparisons between the productive and nutritive 



