CATTLE, HOW TO PASTURE, ETC. 
175 
This is valuable in soils adapted to it, deep dry soils not subject to hard 
freezing in Winter. In California it has become one of the standard 
forage crops. In some of the far west plains country it will undoubtedly 
be found to stand well, as it will in Texas and New Mexico. In South 
America, in the vast grazing region, it has become thoroughly naturalized, 
and is well worthy of trial wherever the Winters will not be too cold for 
it, say south of forty degrees north latitude. 
The True Grasses. 
It is to these that we must really look for our pasture plants, outsido 
the few clovers we have mentioned. It is a vast, as it is the most impor- 
tant of plants to man, comprising some 230 botanical genera, and not 
less than 3,000 species, and includes all our cereal grains, as wheat, rye, 
barley, oats, corn, etc. 
It would not be in place in this work to enter into a history of grass, 
and the characteristics of the several species, valuable as they may be. 
Our readers must therefore be content with a list of some of the more 
important varieties, as they have been tried, and their seasons, and somo 
of their characteristics ; and this more for then- value as pasture thars 
hay, and for reasons previously given. 
Timothy, or Cat’s Tail Grass. 
The first in importance is timothy ; a better name, as more perfectly 
describing its characteristics, would be cats-tail grass, by which it is 
known in England. It does well in all clayey or clay loam soils that are 
not too wet, and makes the best hay of any of our grasses. For pasture 
it is among the least valuable, if we except cattle, since one peculiarity* 
is that just at the ground it forms a bulb, which if bitten in close grazing, 
as horses, sheep and hogs are apt to do, it dies. It is also a grass that 
will not bear hard tramping. 
Blue Grass. 
This is the great pasture grass of the Western States, in its two vane-' 
ties, Kentucky bluo grass, which flourishes best south of forty degrees 
north latitude, and wire grass, which is found well up into Wisconsin and 
Minnesota. Here again is confusion of common names. In Pennsylvania 
it is called green grass, and this is really a suggestive name. It really 
remains green early and late, longer than any other of our cultivated 
grasses. 
Blue grass forms a tough, firm sward, springing early in the Springs 
