m 



To clothe our surface with a verdant coat, seems a fa- 

 vourite object of Nature, and for the most beneficent 

 purposes : but she v/ill execute it in her own way, and by 

 the mixture of a prodigious number of vegetables ; so 

 many, that M. St. Pierre tells us, all the research and 

 diligence of man could not give the complete natural 

 history of all the spontaneous vegetables contained in 

 one square perch of ground. 



Let us, by breaking the surface, and by severe tillage, 

 exterminate every one of these vegetables, and sow the 

 mixture of grass seed we think most desirable ; yet, though 

 they should all vegetate the jftrst year, they will soon vanish, 

 and we shall find, in two or three seasons, the surface 

 occupied by the same mixture that Nature usually pro- 

 duces in such soils, and our labour completely tlu'own 

 away. 



My first agricultural pursuit was to discover how to 

 form the best permanent sole of grass ; and twenty years 

 before I laid oft' the gramina as a peculiar department for 

 myself, I made it a point to dedicate a small portion of 

 every field I laid down to such experiments, and to try 

 both mixtures, and one variety of grass, in small plots. 



The first year, the produce was true to the seed ; in 

 the second, the varieties sown were little predominant, and 

 in the third not to be found. 



Many years afterwards, accident gave me the same 

 result in a more extended and more decided manner. 



Investigating the natural history of the several varieties 

 of grass, I made many plots, not less than fifty, sowing them 

 with all the different kinds, and by attentive weeding for 

 four years, keeping out all mixtures. At length, having 

 obtained the information I sought for, and given it to the 

 world, I ceased weeding ; and in two or three years could 

 not distinguish in any plot, the predominance of the va- 



