242 On Laying down Land to Permanent Grass. 
pasture have been more successful in the North than in the 
South of England, from which the remaining nineteen reports 
come. It seems never to have occurred to one of the writers 
of these fifty-five reports that their want of success may have 
been due to the badness of the seed, or to the presence of a 
large proportion of annual grasses. The different size and 
weight of grass seeds make a very great difference in the 
number of seeds of particular species in a pound, but this has 
apparently been entirely overlooked. As an illustration, take 
the case of Mr. Robert Jefferson, who uses 700,000 seeds of 
meadow fescue and 620,000 seeds of meadow foxtail, as against 
upwards of 1,761,000 seeds of Italian rye-grass and the same 
number of perennial rye-grass. Let us suppose that the ger- 
minating power is equal in these four kinds of seeds, that is, 
that the same percentage produce plants ; we then arrive at the 
somewhat startling result that Mr. Jefferson's pasture con- 
tained more than five plants of rye-grass for each plant of 
meadow fescue, and a little less than six plants of rye-grass for 
each plant of foxtail. But this is an estimate too favourable 
to the two better pasture grasses, for the average germinating 
power of foxtail obtained from seed merchants cannot be taken 
at much over 20 per cent., while the rye-grass ranks at 90 per 
cent. And, still further, as this determination of the germi- 
nating power is obtained by careful experiment in the laboratory 
under lavourable conditions, it must be remembered that the 
extremely delicate germinating seed of foxtail is more liable 
to suffer from the extremes of heat and cold which they may 
encounter in the field than the more robust seed of rye-grass. 
Neglecting, however, this probable cause of inequality in the 
plant-producing power of those seeds when sown in the open 
field, there yet remains the ascertained difference in the germi- 
nating power, which would give no less than twenty-eight plants 
of rye-grass to a single plant of foxtail in Mr. Jefferson's pastures. 
Only seven of the reports give a detailed account of the seeds 
used, and in all these seven cases the proportion of rye-grass 
is large, and in some cases enormous, as, for example. No. 4, 
Mr. J. C. Bowstead (page 455), in which the rye-grass seed 
absolutely exceeds all the permanent grasses and clovers put 
together. No. 9 South of England, Mr. R. Caulcutt, who uses 
Sutton's and Wheeler's mixtures, says, " whoever lays down per- 
manent pasture to any extent must make up his mind to lose for 
at least four or five years." — (P. 490.) Mr. Caulcutt would have 
supplied valuable information had he fenced off a small piece 
of the centre of the pasture sown with these mixtures, and at the 
time of the flowering of the grasses got a competent botanist to 
determine the names and proportions of grasses in the piece of 
