Famous Ancient Pastures of England. 
759 
nutritive value, but when stock do not oat the plant, they 
cannot utilise its nutritious properties. In closely grazed 
pastures dogstail is eaten, like other grasses which are rejected 
when the stock has a sufficient supply of baitable food to permit 
of a choice. In the majority of our pastures, unfortunately, the 
ripe seed-heads secure the rapid increase of a good-looking but 
useless grass wherever it gets a place. 
5. Pasture where Fiorin and Hassock-grass predominate. 
The hassock-grass is rightly looked upon as a most objec- 
tionable plant in pastures. Its long, hard, and harsh leaves, 
with edges so sharp that they cut the fingers when roughly 
drawn along them, are disliked by cattle, and in careful hus- 
bandry the hassocks are uprooted and destroyed. 
Talsle V. — Predominant Grasses — Fiorin and 
Hassock-grass. 
No. 
Pasture 
Cocksfoot 
Meadow fescue | 
Foxtail 
Timothy 
Rough-stalked 
meadow-grass 
Yellow oat-grass 
Rye-grass 
Fiorin 
Hard fescue; 
Dogstail 
Tall oat-grass 
Sweet vernal 
Squirrel-tEiil 
to 
bo 
M 
a 
3 
W 
bo 
3 
z 
h 
« 
Yorkshire fog 
Clover 
Yarrow 
P 
a 
a 
45 
Castle Field . 
0 
C 
A 
P 
C 
r 
A 
A 
r, predominant. A, abundant. C, common. 
In this field the hassock-grass, which made up a large pro- 
portion of the pasture, was freely eaten, and the cattle were in 
good condition. It may be that there is in the pasture a 
scarcity of palatable food, and that the hassock-grass afforded 
as agreeable a mouthful as the fiorin, Yorkshire fog, or rye- 
grass of which the pasture was otherwise chiefly composed. 
No doubt the clover, which formed a good bottom to the pasture, 
accounted to some extent for the good condition of the cattle. 
6. Past ures in which Fiorin predominates. 
There are two species of Agrostis found in pastures ; the 
one (Agrostis vulgaris, L.), popularly known as common bent or 
black twitch, is frequent in dry pastures; and the other (A. alba, 
L.), called fiorin or marsh-bent, is very frequent in wet meadows. 
Both species are stoloniferous — that is, they have creeping wiry 
stems that stretch out sometimes several feet from the parent 
plant and, taking root at the joints, give rise to new plants. 
