152 PERMANENT AND TEMPORARY PASTURES 



continuously maintained. Early mowing tends to weaken the 

 plant, and prevents the seed from maturing. Depasturing 

 and the close treading of land by sheep have been known to 

 lessen the proportion of this grass ; and it is certainly advisable, 

 in the event of flower-heads showing in autumn, to skim the 

 meadows with a scythe. 



Seed of Holcus lanatus is found more or less in all 

 inferior samples of Alopecurus pratensis, Cyrwsurus cristatus, 

 and some other grasses used in prescriptions for sowing 

 down permanent and temporary pastures. 



Yellow Rattle (Rhinanthus Crista-galli). — A parasitic 

 annual which preys on the roots of grasses and clovers in 

 many water-meadows and poor, damp pastures. Cattle dislike 

 it, and as the seeds are matured before meadows are usually 

 mown, there is full opportunity for its increase. Salt at the 

 rate of three or four hundredweight per acre, applied to those 

 portions of the pasture where Yellow Rattle abounds, will 

 greatly reduce and may entirely exterminate the plant. 



The plants already described are negatively objectionable, 

 being deficient in those qualities which are essential in crops 

 intended for the support of animal life. Economic prin- 

 ciples demand that such plants should be destroyed, and their 

 places filled with herbage which contributes to the credit side 

 of the agricultural balance-sheet. 



The plants to which I have now to refer possess the 

 far more serious fault of containing active poisons, or of being 

 injurious in some other way, such as tainting milk and ren- 

 dering butter unsaleable. Cattle, and especially in-calf cows, 

 frequently show a predilection for unusual herbage, and the 

 death of valuable animals may be the first intimation that 

 watercourses, hedges, and ditches have not been kept free 

 from poisonous plants ; or the loss of a good market for milk 

 and butter may be almost equally disastrous. When cattle 



