On Laying down Land to Permanent Grass. 
255 
rye-grass, crested dogstail, and hard fescue. These grasses 
generally compose too great a proportion of the meadow pasture 
from this fact, that stock do not eat their flower-heads, so that 
they ripen and cast their seeds. 
Another cause of the pasture deteriorating is that stock, sheep 
especially, have a great partiality for some grasses over others. 
I have watched carefully the procedure of well-fed sheep when 
they were grazing. In the progress of my investigations I 
observed that the rams were more particular in the rejection or 
selection of the different elements in the pasture, and I accord- 
ingly directed my attention specially to their behaviour. By 
the aid of an opera-glass I have been able to make these obser- 
vations without disturbing the sheep : I have been surprised at 
the way in which they discriminate between two grasses, eating 
the leaves of the one and rejecting those of the other, though 
they are closely intermingled as they grow. The better grasses 
are consequently cropped closely. It necessarily follows that 
the grasses that are rarely cropped will, from the natural sowing 
of their ripe seeds, in the course of two or three years, greatly in- 
crease, although they may not entirely exterminate the better ones. 
The great number of inferior meadows in England are due to 
these two causes ; and the only way, in forming a new pasture to 
secure satisfactory results, is to sow only good grasses, which the 
stock will eat, and to select such different kinds as will supply 
stock with food as the seasons come round. Nature has 
provided a succession of nutritious grasses, which follow each 
other with wonderful regularity in our temperate climate, and 
throughout the whole spring, summer, and autumn there should 
always be a grass in perfection in every good pasture. 
I have frequently seen it stated that, while stock may do well 
in a pasture at one period of the year, they fall off at another, 
however favourable the season may be. In some meadows sheep 
do remarkably well in the spring, in others in summer, and 
in others again late in the autumn. I have invariably been able 
to trace the cause to the kind of grass forming the pasture, and 
have found no explanation for it either in the soil or the configura- 
tion of the land. A meadow composed of a large percentage of 
foxtail is certain to produce a large quantity of early keep. The 
deep-green coloured leaves of this grass may be observed some 
inches long before other grasses have begun to grow. Foxtail, 
therefore, ought to be a grass for early lambs on all soils where 
it will grow. Unfortunately, the flower-heads of foxtail are so 
greedily eaten by stock that it rarely or never has a chance of 
seeding in any meadow to which stock have access ; it is, how- 
ever, the earliest of all grasses to seed, and therefore usually 
sheds its seed before hay is cut. The crested dogstail is 
