HORTICULTURAL JOURNAL. 211 



of Philadelphia butter. Having spent some time in the investigation of the 

 subject, I communicated to him my views, and these may be found by any 

 one who will take the trouble to refer to the Farmer's Library, for April, 

 1845, or the Patent office Report for 1849-50. After several years addi- 

 tional attention and observation, since my first publication, I find no reason 

 to change any of the opinions formerly expressed. These have been exten- 

 sively published in newspapers and agricultural periodicals, but, so far as I 

 know, have never been assailed or treated so ungraciously as in the para- 

 graph quoted from the Boston Cultivator. The person who furnished the 

 article assumes to know something about the grasses in the pastures of this 

 vicinity, and speaks of the "June grass" (poa pratensis,) as abounding in 

 them. This he describes as one of the sweetest and most nutritive of 

 grasses, and would seem to infer that it may possibly furnish the proximate 

 principle which confers on Philadelphia butter its peculiarly fine flavor. Not 

 having myself ever heard of a grass in this locality designated as the 

 " Jane grass," I have asked others whose residence in the country ought to 

 have made them acquainted with a grass described as abounding. But no 

 one appears to know anything of June grass. Poa pratensis, or common 

 green grass, that which constitutes the almost universal herbage of every 

 other portion of our country, exists around Philadelphia, though here its 

 quantity is limited by its rival in the sward. Like all the poa family, the 

 common green grass, or poa pratensis, is destitute of any fragrant or aro- 

 matic principle, though it certainly gives out a grateful odor when newly 

 mown. The sweet-scented vernal grass, however, possesses a distinct aro- 

 matic principle, which can be readily distilled from it, and the basis of which 

 is the well known benzoic acid, familiarly known to apothecaries as the 

 Flowers of Benzoin. Within a circle of many miles diameter around Phi- 

 ladelphia, every field left out of culture a few years, becomes coated with 

 its sweet verdure — the soil being filled with latent seed. The longer the 

 meadows or upland pastures are left unbroken by the plough, the greater 

 the predominance of this fragrant herbage. It is precisely these old pas- 

 ture grounds, of twenty or thirty years standing, that furnish the highest 

 flavored butter, and that, in the latter part of May, when the grass is in 

 bloom, fills the surrounding country with a rich, vanilla-like fragrance. 



In the communications published by me relative to this grass, I have ex- 

 pressly stated that it was not to be regarded as a first-rate hay grass, or cul- 

 tivated separately as such. But as a pasture grass, I deem it valuable for 

 many reasons, among which are the following: 1. It furnishes the first 

 spring bite, so grateful to the stock of all kinds. Cows are very fond of it 



