327 
as sometimes happens in the neighbourhood of the 
metropolis, where manure can be easily procured, 
the application of it to pasture is repaid for by 
the increase of crop ; but top-dressing grass land 
with animal or vegetable manure, cannot be recom- 
mended as a general system. Dr. Coventry very 
justly observes, that there is a greater waste of the 
manure in this case, than when it is ploughed into 
the soil for seed crops. The loss by exposure to 
the air, and the sunshine, offer reasons, in addition 
to those that have been already quoted in the Sixth 
Lecture, for the application of manure, even in this 
case, in a state of incipient and not completed 
fermentation. 
Very little attention has been paid to the nature 
of the grasses best adapted for permanent pasture. 
The chief circumstance which gives value to a grass 
is the quantity of nutritive matter that the whole 
crop will afford; but the time and duration of its 
produce are likewise points of great importance ; 
and a grass that supplies green nutriment through- 
out the whole of the year, may be more valuable 
than a grass which yields its produce only in sum- 
mer, though the whole quantity of food supplied by 
it should be much less. 
The grasses that propagate themselves by layers, 
the different species of Agrostis, supply pasture 
throughout the year ; and, as it has been mentioned 
on a former occasion, the concrete sap stored up 
in their joints renders them a good food even in 
winter. I saw four square yards of fiorin grass cut 
in the end of January, this year, in a meadow ex- 
clusively appropriated to the cultivation of fiorin, 
y 4 
