161 



ject, I am ready to encounter sterility in any fornio 

 Certain that the accommodatingfiorin, under proper manage- 

 ment, would clothe with verdure, and of course pasturage, 

 many fields now assumed to be consigned to perpetual 

 barrenness, and having got my foot in Germais Y, I should 

 like to make an experiment on the Brandenburg heaths, 

 at present so dreary and desolate. 



Since I commenced this Memoir I am called upon to a 

 new and very promising field, the marshy (and I presume 

 alluvial) grounds bounding the great American rivers. 



Mr. SwARTSWOUTH of New YoRK, encouraged, as he 

 tells me, by the successful experiments of Judge Peters 

 and others on European fiorin grass, is most anxious to 

 have my opinion on the probability of its succeeding on the 

 marshy banks of the North River, so as to enable him 

 to supply the city of New York with hay. 



1 had formerly declined to encourage the gentlemen of 

 Boston to cultivate this grass ; for finding I had be^n 

 unable to persuade my English pupils to keep the fiorin I 

 was teaching them to cultivate free from weeds, I feared 

 I should also fail in New England, where the rush of 

 summer vegetation was so much more powerful. 



I have given more encouragement to Mr. Swarts- 

 WOUTH, and have transmitted to him full directions how 

 to call into action the spontaneous fiorin which I know 

 exists in the marshy grounds, and how to apply the mea- 

 sures I have already so minutely detailed in this Memoir 

 to the repression of its rivals, and to the transfer of the 

 exclusive possession of his marshes to the grass he wishes 

 for; strongly impressing on him the indispensable necessity 

 of his own constant interference in the extermination of 

 intruders, as well as in the careful discharge of all water 

 by most numerous surface drains leading to sluices with 

 outward opening valves. 



