342 
On the St. Johns-Day Rye. 
known, is an important benefit to agriculture. The celebrated agricul- 
turist Du Hamel du Monceau mentions an individual who had obtained 
from one sowing five abundant cuts of green rj'e for cattle in two years. 
If any green plant is cut down before the fructification is completed, it 
will in general throw out fresh stems ; and in verj' rich soils its blos- 
soming may thus be continually retarded, until the roo\s become too 
weak to force successive stems." 
The variety quoted by Mr. Rhatn must either be a different 
variety, or else must be cultivated in a far superior soil and climate 
to those which are known to the author. The introduction of the 
St. John's-day rye into England is due, so far as is known to the 
author of these remarks, to the late John Shute Duncan, Esq., 
LL.D., a person whose long life was passed in the untiring ex- 
ercise of every patriotic, charitable^ useful, and friendly act that 
could adorn human nature, or add to the happiness or gralificaiion 
of his fellow-creatures. That valued friend, knowing the fond- 
ness of the author for agricultural experiments, near thirtv years 
since obtained from M. Vilmorin, No. 30, Quai de la Megisserie, 
dit de la Feraille, Paris, amongst many other new and valuable 
varieties of plants, which the writer, under his auspices, intro- 
duced into England, as the Georgian oat, the winter bean, and 
the double-bearing saintfoin (now lately communicated to the 
Royal Agricultural Society), about a pint of the seed of the St. 
John's-day rye, and presented them to the author. From this 
small beginning the author, in the four following years, raised a 
stock sufficient to crop many acres, which he used both for stable- 
food and for sheep-feed. But a change of residence occasioning 
him to relinquish farming for many years, those to whom ho dis- 
posed of his stock of this grain neglected to preserve it. When 
the author again resumed farming operations, one of his earliest 
cares was again to import from Messrs. Vilmorin and Co. a supply 
of this useful seed. 
It is worthy of remark, that those admirable farmers the 
Tuscans, from whom, according to the testimony of Messrs. 
Lawson (Agriculturist's Manual, p. 32), M. Vilmorin obtained 
his first sample of St. John's-day rye, " sow," as related by M. 
J. C. L. Simondi, the learned and judicious author of the 
' Tableau de I'Agriculture Toscane,' p. 60, " a great deal of rye, 
or rather," as he says, " of maslin. They sow it in the most 
fertile soils, and in the most meagre. The first, they say, are too 
rich for wheat, the latter too poor. All the fields which the in- 
habitants of the hill district of Tuscany (La Colline) possess at 
the entrance of the plains, are in general sown with rye, as well as 
their gardens, which the gardener wishes to rest, or rather to im- 
poverish, which he does every three or four years." 
The soil most suitable for the culture of the St. John's-dav, as 
