KIDD'S OWN JOURNAL. 



173 



Agrostographia ; a Treatise on the Culti- 

 vated Grasses, and other Herbage and 

 Forage Plants. By Peter Lawson&Son, 

 Seedsmen to the Highland and Agricultural 

 Society of Scotland. Fourth edition. 

 Edinburgh. Private press of P. Lawson & 

 Son.— 1853. 



One of the clearest, and withal most 

 cheering signs of the times, is the increasing 

 value placed upon the accurate scientific 

 knowledge of their art by the mechanic and 

 manufacturer, not less than the professional 

 man and the mariner. Scarcely a mechanic 

 now, of any respectability, but attends a 

 course of natural philosophy and mathe- 

 matics ; or a manufacturer but knows the 

 chemistry of the subjects he works. All are 

 improving, because improvement is necessary 

 to keep up with the haltless march of intel- 

 lect, and the progress of invention. 



One class of producers, however, have had 

 little done for their advancement, and we 

 fear, as a body, have not been willing to 

 make a push for themselves — we mean the 

 agriculturists. True, we can point to afew 

 districts where a general knowledge of the 

 chemistry of the soil, plants, and manures, 

 with the principles of machinery, is held to 

 be a valuable adjunct to the practical ex- 

 perience which forms the staple commodity 

 among the majority of farmers. It is hardly 

 necessary to say that, while the general class 

 have been groaning under the unrestricted 

 importation of corn, the favored few, who 

 could look beyond their stack-yard and their 

 dunghill, have been thriving respectably, and 

 in deed, if not in word, giving defiance to the 

 world. 



Any effort made to produce so desirable 

 an object as the enlightenment of the tillers 

 of the soil, must meet with the fervent good 

 wishes of every thinking man. Among many 

 more, of perhaps greater authority, who have 

 embarked in this good fight, are the authors 

 of the little work before us. In 1836, they 

 published their " Agriculturists' Manual," 

 a book replete with information on the kinds 

 and cultivation of every variety of crop, from 

 the blade of grass to the monarch of the 

 forest. The work now under notice treats, 

 as the title indicates, of a certain section of 

 these merely ; and, as might be expected, is 

 only a later and more perfect edition of a 

 portion of the Manual. In the preface it is 

 stated, that — 



For more than forty years the attention of the 

 authors has been particularly directed to that 

 branch of agriculture which comprises the culti- 

 vation of grasses and other herbage and forage 

 plants used for pasturing and feeding cattle. 

 Twenty years ago [in 1833] they drew up the 

 results of their accumulated observations and ex- 



periments, with accompanying tables, specifying 

 the kinds and quantities of seeds necessary to he 

 sown for securing proper pasturage ; which obser- 

 vations were the following year published in the 

 " Quarterly Journal of Agriculture." In 1836, 

 after undergoing revision, these tables were re- 

 published in the " Agriculturists' Manual." 



A continuation of careful and minute trials and 

 comparisons led them, in 1842, again to revise 

 these tables, which were then embodied in the 

 first edition of the present treatise, a second edition 

 of which was called for in 1846, and a third in 

 1850. The circulation of three large editions of 

 a practical treatise on grasses proves, at least, that 

 considerable attention is now paid to this im- 

 portant subject ; and the authors would fain hope 

 that their efforts to diffuse useful information on 

 this branch of agriculture have, in some degree, 

 been the means of bringing about so satisfactory a 

 result. 



The work is divided as follows : — 



Chapter I., which treats of the Introduction and 

 Cultivation of Species and Varieties. 



Chapter II., which enumerates the Kinds, and 

 specifies the Quantities of Seeds for Sowing down 

 Land to Pasture. 



Chapter III., which describes, in a popular 

 manner, the Natural and Artificial Grasses. 



From the first of these, we quote two para- 

 graphs in the early history of this branch of 

 hnsbandry. 



Although the Egyptians, Jews, Greeks, and 

 other eminent nations of antiquity, bestowed con- 

 siderable care on the culture of the cereal 

 grains, pulse, flax, and various other plants, the 

 products of which conduced to the alleviation of 

 their personal wants, by affording either food or 

 clothing ; and although the possession of flocks 

 and herds was among many of these nations 

 deemed indicative both of power and honor — yet it 

 does not appear that the cultivation of plants for 

 the exclusive purpose of feeding cattle, was prac- 

 tised prior to the period when Rome swayed the 

 sceptre over the greater part of the then known 

 world — when her warriors and senators enjoyed, 

 in the culture of their lands, relaxation from 

 the dangers of the battle-field or the cares of the 

 state. Then, in the times which immediately 

 preceded the decline of that mighty empire, the 

 Romans not only grew wheat, far or spelt, barley, 

 beans, &c, for bread ; but they also cultivated 

 lucerne,red clover, vetches, lupines, fenugreek, and 

 other leguminous plants, which they used both in 

 a green and a dried state for feeding their live 

 stock ; and for like purposes they also employed 

 turnip and rape. 



In England, while hemp, flax, hops, and buck- 

 wheat, in addition to wheat, rye, and barley, were 

 in the sixteenth century reckoned common crops, 

 yet the cultivation of forage and herbage plants 

 was only commenced about the middle of the 

 seventeenth century, with the exception of summer 

 and winter tares or vetches, which are mentioned 

 by the earliest writers on agriculture. John 

 Gerarde, the famous herbalist, surgeon, and tra- 

 veller, states in his " General History of Plants," 

 published in 1597, that the red clover was sown 

 in fields of the Low Countries, in Italy, and divers 



