400 CEREALS. 



of any variety. A winter oat, sown for many years past by 

 Mr. Tom Crutchfield, of Chattanooga, furnishes an immense 

 amount of winter pasturage. When I visited his farm, in 

 November, the earth was matted with the rich, rank, dark- 

 green herbage, fifteen inches high, looking like a thrifty 

 wheat field in early May. I am satisfied that the amount of 

 grazing which this crop will furnish until the middle of 

 March, will equal that furnished by the same number 

 of acres of the very best clover. This oat is an annual, 

 hardy as rye, springs up, after being cropped, with more ra- 

 pidity, and furnishes a larger amount of grazing than wheat, 

 rye, barley, or any other winter grazing grass. It matures 

 earlier than the common oat by ten days, is not attacked by 

 the fly,, and can be seeded at a time when farmers, outside 

 of the tobacco growing districts, have most leisure. By its 

 aid stock may be carried through the winter for one-half 

 what they can be with regular winter feed. I am satisfied 

 that the cost of keeping sheep through the winter, with this 

 oat will not exceed twenty-cents per head, nor a cow more 

 than two dollars. 



The yield is as various as the character of soils. Some 

 thin lands will not make more than fifteen bushels per acre, 

 while a good heavy, stiff loam will, with the some variety, 

 yield seventy-five or eighty bushels per acre. The average 

 may fairly be stated at thirty-five bushels on all sorts of 

 lands. One gentleman sowed two acres of land as nearly sim- 

 ilar as possible, and with the same cultivation. One acre 

 he left in its natural state, while he sowed one hundred 

 pounds of gypsum or land plaster on the other. On the 

 first he got fifteen bushels of oats, while on the other he ob- 

 tained sixty-three bushels, nearly fifty bushels the result of 

 one hundred pounds of plaster. There is, probably, no 

 other crop that responds more promptly to the application 

 of manures, or that better repays good cultivation, while on 

 poor ground, with slovenly culture, it does not yield enough 

 to pay the expenses incurred. With these facts before us it 



