168 HEARINGS BEFORE COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE. 
Mr. Spriiman. Yes; it is considerable. 
The CuarrmMan. By the way, what is the value of the hay crop? 
Mr. Srrttman. I will have to do a little figuring before I can tell 
you. There are 61,000,000 acres that yield an average for the whole 
country of 14; tons per acre, and the average value per ton for the 
whole country is somewhere in the neighborhood of $8 or $10. Mul- 
tiply those flgures together and you will get it for the whole country 
over. 
Mr. Bowrs. It is as much as the cotton crop in some years, but not 
as much as it is at present? 
Mr. Sprttman. I should say that the hay crop and the cotton crop— 
Mr. Bowrs. They are pretty near together? 
Mr. Sriutman. Sometimes one is ahead and sometimes the other. I 
presume that is the case. 
Mr. Gattoway. The yield of corn in 1903 was two and one-half 
billions of bushels? 
Mr. Sprutman. The acreage I have not in mind, but the acreage of 
hay is next to corn and next to that comes wheat, and then, I believe, 
cotton comes next on the list. Out of these 15,000,000 acres of hay 
that are cut from wild grasses, no one of these wild grasses has ever 
been domesticated. Now, some of them make hay that sells at a higher 
price than any other hay on the market. In Denver there are two 
kinds of hay that are regarded as superior to timothy hay for carriage 
horses, and livery-stable men pay $1 or $2 more per ton for them than 
the finest timothy hay. Those are wild, and we know very little about 
them except that they make good hay. There are millions of acres of 
land in the West that are now used only for range land, upon which 
we believe it is possible to make these grasses grow. 
Mr. Ropry. We cut tens of thousands of tons of it and pack it for 
sale in the market. 
Mr. Sprutman. There are some of those grasses that we are familiar 
with and we have been studying them now for two years. My pre- 
decessor studied them a good deal, too, and we have gotten far enough 
to individualize those grasses which we know are of great value, but 
here is one of the difficulties we meet with in studying those grasses. 
Take one of the very best of all of them, it is a grass that would 
yield, I should say, twice as much as timothy and the stock will eat it 
in preference to timothy, but it is a grass that has seed habits that 
are so bad that it is absolutely impossible to grow it under cultivation 
at present. Now, that grass is found in nearly every State of the 
Union. It is a weed that is plentiful around Washington City. It is 
a weed plentiful in the State of Washington. It can not be grown 
under cultivation, but frequently is cut for hay in the wild state. We 
find it a very variable grass and we are working with the hope of 
being able to get a strain that will hold its seed until it is ripe. 
Mr. Henry. What is its name? 
Mr. Sprutman. Reed canary grass. I have seen it grow higher 
than my head under exceptional conditions. I have cut 5 tons of it 
to the acre. 
Mr. Scorr. When it grows so rank as to yield 5 tons to the acre, 
is it valuable for food purposes? 
Mr. Spruiman. Stock will eat it in preference to timothy or red 
clover or redtop. There are European grasses that are superior to 
our grasses, but our farmers will not grow them. We are trying to 
get them to grow them. 
