8 
Mr.  William  Carruthers. 
the  Irish  Land  Commission  by  the  Society’s  Botanist  exhibited 
a worse  condition  in  the  seed  trade  in  Ireland  than  existed  in 
England,  and  resulted  in  the  establishment,  in  connection  with 
a Government  Department,  of  a seed  station  in  Dublin. 
Seeds  for  Pasture. 
The  Committee  next  dealt  with  forming  new  and  im- 
proving old  pastures.  The  universal  experience  was  that 
after  the  second  or  third  year  new  pastures  began  to  fail.  It 
had  been  the  practice — a practice  still  prevalent — to  purchase 
mixtures  prepared  by  the  merchants  for  different  geological 
formations,  and  composed  of  a considerable  variety  of  grasses 
and  other  plants.  The  farmer  bought  so  many  pounds  per  acre 
of  the  mixture.  There  appeared  in  the  first  year  a good  crop 
of  fine  grass,  which  maintained  itself  for  a second  year,  and 
thereafter  began  to  fail.  The  chief  ingredient  in  these  mixtures 
was  rye-grass — the  so-called  perennial  and  the  shorter-lived 
Italian. 
Good  Pasture  Grasses. 
In  dealing  with  this  problem  it  was  important  to  find  out 
what  plants  were  palatable  to  the  stock.  No  matter  how  well 
they  looked  to  the  farmer,  if  they  were  not  eaten  they  were  of 
no  value  in  the  pasture.  The  grasses  and  other  plants  which 
flower  and  seed  in  a well-fed  pasture  afford  the  farmer  obvious 
evidence  as  to  the  plants  which  are  not  palatable  to  his  stock. 
These  have  been  rejected  in  the  grazing.  Some  care  must  be 
taken  in  observing  the  treatment  of  the  pasture  by  animals. 
A cautious  and  experienced  agriculturist  ascribed  the  high 
feeding  value  of  a pasture  in  Herefordshire  to  the  rye-grass 
which  was  manifest  everywhere  in  the  field.  He  hurdled  in  a 
portion,  and  immediately  the  unobserved  cocksfoot,  meadow 
fescue,  and  foxtail  sprang  up.  He  concluded  that  the  “ coarse  ” 
grasses  were  deleterious  because  they  smothered  the  finer  rye- 
grass, but  afterwards  he  found  that  these  coarse  grasses  were 
the  valuable  elements  in  the  pasture,  and  had  been  eaten  so 
closely  down  by  the  stock  that  they  escaped  his  notice.  The 
cattle  had  fattened  on  them  and  neglected  the  rye-grass.  Next, 
to  find  which  of  these  supplied  the  largest  amount  of  nutri- 
ment, and  finally  what  grasses  and  other  plants  maintained  their 
hold  on  the  ground,  that  is,  were  perennial.  The  famous  pas- 
tures of  England  were  inspected  and  reported  upon,  careful 
observations  were  made  as  to  the  selection  or  rejection  of  the 
different  plants  in  the  pastures,  and  experiments  were  carried 
on  at  the  Society’s  farm  at  Woburn  with  separate  plots  of 
grasses  and  clovers.  The  committee  were  greatly  aided  in  these 
matters  by  the  observations  and  experiments  of  the  late  C.  De 
