TARRYTOWN LETTERS. 



133 



hay-maker in the grange knew them at once. Any 

 naturalist would have envied the crisp and concise 

 language of these descriptions. They detailed the 

 appearance and habits of the plants referred to 

 throughout the entire season, proving familiarity 

 with their life-history. But the names given were 

 a caution to public educators ! 



The advice not to mention names, produced, on 

 the contrary, a wonderful flux in that respect, for a 

 while, from all parts of the grange-room. Perhaps 

 Mrs. Tarryer meant to, though more likely she 

 couldn't help it. But when a number of these ven- 

 erable fathers had fully aired their vocabularies in 

 the most gracious manner, giving out the few names 

 that had been handed down in their respective 

 families with a certain degree of unction, the 

 effect was seen to be somewhat ludicrous by the 

 young people present who were watching closely 

 and there was a halting and a looking to and fro 

 among the stalwart speakers ! 



By referring to the minutes of the secretary — a 

 vigilant sister — it was found that sei'en different 

 bhte — six hvitch — " or a kind of a twitch" — and five 

 June grasses had been noted and accurately de- 

 scribed. This was too much ! If our farming 

 people were not the most conservative and orderly 

 in the world there would have been a great row in 

 that meeting ! As it was, everything ended pleas- 

 antly. 



The fact is, "crops" and "weeds" are the two 

 general classifications most used in agriculture. 

 These may rarely come to speech and only be in 

 mind. If boys or girls ask what such or such a 

 plant is and it is named by an elder, the name may 

 soon forgotten and the plant as well, unless it be 

 persistently useful or troublesome. But an exact 

 knowledge, though perhaps unspoken — of the plants 

 it has to deal with, is fixed in rural life, otherwise 

 it could not exist. The plain duty of science is to 

 get on its farm and garden boots and blow the 

 chaff of scholastic ages out of its own names of 

 needful plants so the people can use them. We 

 have very few grass names comvioii in this country! 

 It is a waste of time to rake together, revive and 

 print the obsolete nick-names which never had and 

 never can have general circulation. They are of 

 no use, except by their dead weight to sink the whole 

 in oblivion. 



For the plants we must take stock in, we need 

 legal denominations as exact as we have for money, 

 and as current wherever we travel. The farmer, 

 gardener, writer or statesman in debate who cannot 

 give the systematic names of the plants he uses is 

 practically dumb in this generation. 



Likewise the botanist or teacher of agriculture 

 and gardening who cannot name useful plants by 

 their appearances dwarfed in the sod, is not equipped 

 by his schooling for the ordinary arts of life. Some 

 of our grass books — Low's "British Grasses," to 

 wit — have double columns of botanic synonyms, 

 that so far as our new prints are concerned, should 

 be tied, neck and heels, with our mobs of local 

 aliases, and deliberately forgotten as useless lumber. 



Have I intimated that farmers are suffering more 

 than other classes in the dearth of means for com- 

 municating ideas respecting our common grasses ? 

 Let me correct the impression, for the whole coun- 

 try is waiting for our experiment stations to do 

 something about it. Some deny the state right to 

 go blundering, and assert that the Department of 

 Agriculture should lead us. Every agricultural 

 editor and writer is waiting for somebody to find 

 out about "grass." Within three months the 

 polite world will be tearing its hair and discharging 

 gardeners in vexation at the annual grass that is 

 ruining its lawns.* 



When Chairman Hatch, of the House Agricul- 

 tural Committee, put his thumbs and fingers instruc- 

 tively together before him and said : " I suppose 

 you know, Mr. Tarryer, that there are two kinds of 

 ' blue grass ' — I had to interject, hastily, in dread of 

 a quarrel, for there were very positive gentlemen 

 from widely different sections of the United States 

 in the committee-room — "Yes, sir — there are three, 

 and five — and " — dropping my voice to a whisper — 

 " seven kinds of blue grass in some agricultural cir- 

 cles — that's whafs the matter, sir." Luckily Mr. 

 Hatch took the hint and dropped the subject. 



Some politicians fancy it is all their official life is 

 worth to mention the right name of a grass now, in 

 a farmer's meeting. Perhaps it would be for some 

 of them. Uncle Jerry Rusk has a good story 

 he likes to tell about some municipal embankments 

 he had turfed with a grass that held on while the 

 other fellows' banks (who laughed at him), "went 

 DOWN, SIR ! — WENT DOWN !" But he was stuck in 

 naming the variety till one suggested "the kind 

 that grows through potatoes?"! "That's it" — 

 said he. 



Systematic names go easier in journalism be- 

 cause writers are not by when the average editor — 

 galled by old blunders he had no means of detect- 

 ing — winces. But there is no need to be timorous 

 abont using the simple Latin name for a grass when 

 we are sure we are right. Let us have the courage 



^•Panicuyn sangtihiale, probabh'. — Ed.] 

 repens, no doubt. — Ed.] 



