Canadian Agriculture. 
449 
Canadian farmers can grow from 75 to 100 bushels of corn per 
acre, at a cost not exceeding 25. per bushel, to say nothing of 
the three or four tons of excellent fodder ; as green food, 
Indian corn properly cultivated and fed in conjunction with 
other fodder, has been proved to be one of the cheapest and one 
of the best articles of diet for the production of meat or milk. 
Grass Lands. — Turning for a moment to the consideration of 
grass lands, nothing is calculated to surprise an agricultural 
visitor to Canada more than the paucity of cultivated grasses. 
The Dominion farmers, indeed, cultivate but one grass, and 
that is timothy. A field of timothy, and nothing but timothy, 
was a novel sight to me at first, but I soon got used to it. So 
common is timothy, that it has long since escaped from the culti- 
vated lands, and is a familiar weed-grass almost everywhere in 
Eastern Canada, — along road sides and railway tracks, and on 
waste lands in or near the towns. And the people evidently 
believe in timothy, pure and unmixed, for growers are as ready to 
give, as buyers are eager to demand, a guarantee that the " tame " 
hay they offer for sale is clean and pure timothy. Similarly, of 
the leguminous plants, only the common red clover seems to be 
generally cultivated. Foxtail, cocksfoot, the fescues, the meadow 
grasses, and the rye-grasses are almost unknown in cultivation ; 
and the same may be said of Dutch clover, alsike, black medick, 
" trifolium," and sainfoin. Catch crops, and "seeds" for two 
or three years' lay, are quite outside the practice of the bulk of 
Canadian farmers. Still, in justice to the Ontario Experi- 
mental Farm, it must be stated that most of these green forage 
plants are being submitted to trial, and that the valuable results 
hitherto obtained have already attracted the notice of the 
more progressive farmers of the Province, some of whom are 
sowing mixtures of grass-seeds, and otherwise introducing the 
cultivation of a valuable group of plants which have too long 
been neglected. Very satisfactory results have attended the 
trials of lucerne, and there is no doubt that this crop might be 
grown with great advantage in most districts where the latter 
part of summer is usually droughty, as in such circumstances it 
would be an invaluable adjunct to failing pastures. Hungarian 
grass, a species of Setaria, one of the millet grasses, is, by the 
way, somewhat largely grown in certain districts, but I should 
think it would be well to replace it with mixtures of ascertained 
utility. The laying down of land to grass is a problem that will 
have to be grappled with before long in Eastern Canada, and, 
in the event of the proposed Central Bureau of Agriculture being 
established, it should certainly provide for an efficient seed con- 
trol, otherwise incalculable mischief may arise from the scatter- 
ing of impure and ill-chosen grass-seeds throughout the land. 
