171 



vering" the value of fiorin from any thing likely to occur to 

 them in their own practice. 



I commence with the Haymakers ; — the Farmer has at 

 all times availed himself of the first rush of the earliest of 

 the culmiferous tribe of grasses — in fact, the most luxuriant 

 and valuable of the description. He mows when he thinks 

 the mass of the produce on the ground has attained its 

 highest perfection, and he saves the crop for store ; he has 

 no indication yVowi nature that the same ground is stocked 

 with another grass of later period, capable of }ielding him 

 a much finer crop. 



Should he have been by accident prevented from 

 mowing at the proper time, the state of his late crop 

 would have given him no information ; a thick mass of 

 culmiferous grasses in a state of decay, with a few weakly 

 green stolones peeping through them; the efforts of this 

 agrostis repressed, and the growth of its stolones impeded 

 by the crowd already in possession — nothing to induce him 

 to suspect the real value of this grass. 



A haymaker, at any period previous to the discovery of 

 fiorin, would have thought the man mad who advised him 

 to root out all the early grasses that had hitherto formed 

 his hay crop, as soon as they appeared ; his cock's-foot, 

 his rye grass, h\s fox-tail, and his meadow fescue ; assuring 

 him that nature of herself would give him at a later season 

 a more luxuriant crop from another grass now growing in 

 the same meadow, but which had as yet scarcely shown 

 itself. 



Strange as such advice might appear, yet it teaches the 

 practice he must follow, if he expects a valuable fiorin 

 crop, as the result of his own deliberate culture, or of the 

 spontaneous effort of nature; — and it is plain, that to this 

 practice the most attentive observation of his own could 

 not have led him a single step. 



