April 28. 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
55 
necessary to sprinkle the surface with fresh gravel when 
all the frost for that season was over. 
In all this we are only answering questions on the 
subject, and have met all but the last question that we 
remember, and that is about freshening up concrete 
walks. When the surface of a concrete walk gets bare 
of fine gravel by long usage, or much sweeping, it turns 
to a light colour. Again, when a concrete walk is in a 
part where it is liable to get dirty on the top in winter, 
and it is necessary to scrape off the dirty surface in the 
spring, it will not do to lay a very thin coat of fresh 
gravel on the top. If the bottom is dry at the time, 
one might as well think of getting Scotch snuff to stick 
to an English pavement, as to do that. The concrete 
bottom must be thoroughly wetted, so that a finger 
could mark it, then the fresh gravel, and immediately 
the roller; and the whole will unite, and soon be as 
hard as a concrete walk. Once more—if a tlrunderbolt 
falls, and makes a hole or great scratch in the surface 
of a concrete walk, one must not exp>ect to mend it with 
so much gravel, let it be ever so good. Clear away the 
sides till all loose particles are got rid of, then put down 
four parts of gravel and one part of chalk, and work 
I them with water to a stiff paste or mortar, and fill up 
with this—smoothing the top with the back of the 
spade; then sweep as much from the walk as will cover 
the patch, strike the back of the spade on this, and no 
one can perceive the difference. D. B. 
At this grass-sowing season our readers will be bene¬ 
fited by our introducing to them a safe guide in 
selecting seeds for their soil and purpose. There was 
a day when the cultivator of the soil contentedly sowed 
the sweepings of a hay-loft, without enquiring, or even 
thinking, whether the seeds thus mixed with rubbish 
were ripe; whether they came from a soil similar to his 
own; or whether they were not more seeds of weeds 
than of grasses. Such rude practice is now at an end, 
and is justly looked back upon as fitly classed with such 
barbarisms as tying horses to the plough by their tails. 
Among those who have aided to bring about a correct 
culture of the Grasses, are Messrs. Gibbs and Co., of 
London, Messrs. Sutton and Co., of Reading, and 
Messrs. Peter Lawson and Son, of Edinburgh. The 
latter are the seedsmen and nurserymen to the High¬ 
land and Agricultural Society of Scotland, and have 
; published a thin quarto volume on the subject, entitled 
j Agrostographia, a treatise on the cultivated grasses and 
other herbage and forage plants. The fourth edition, 
; greatly improved, is now before us, and we strongly 
j recommend it to our readers. It is not only a sound 
j practical guide to any one desiring to know what grass 
j seeds to sow upon his soil; and how much of each 
j species he should employ ; but he will find truthful and 
j copious particulars relative to the nutritive and other 
1 qualities of each. The following extract will be suffi- 
i cient evidence that there is amusement as well as in¬ 
struction in the volume :— 
“ In England, while hemp, flax, hops, and buckwheat, in 
addition to common wheat, rye,.and barley, were, in the 
sixteenth century, reckoned common crops; yet the culti¬ 
vation of forage or herbage plants was only commenced 
about the middle of the seventeenth century, with the ex¬ 
ception of summer and winter tares or vetches, which are 
mentioned by the earliest writers on agriculture. John 
Gerarde, the famous herbalist, surgeon and traveller, of the 
days of Queen Elizabeth, states, in his ‘ General History of 
; Plants,’ published in 1597, that ‘the red clover was sown in 
the fields of the Low Countries, in Italy, and divers other 
places beyond the seas,’ but makes no mention of it being 
then known in England; and Sir Richard Weston, who, in 
1(145, published his ‘ Travels in Flanders,’ mentions that, 
in the preceding year, he saw a crop of it cut three times in j 
the course of the summer, in the vicinity of Antwerp; and i 
immediately thereafter, seeds of the ‘ Great. Clover of 
Flanders ' were advertised ‘to be had at the shop of James | 
, Long, at the Barge on Billingsgate.’ In 1653, Walter Blytli, I 
an agricultural writer, was the first to publish particular ! 
directions as to its culture ; so that the merit of its primary i 
introduction to England is generally ascribed to Sir Richard j 
! Weston, who is also believed to have first introduced, from 
| the same country, the field culture of turnips, on his return 
in 1645. Sainfoin, or, as it was first named, French finger- 
grass, seems to have been introduced from France in 1651. 
According to Miller, author of the ‘ Gardener’s Dictionary,’ 
lucern was also brought to England, from the same 
country, in 1657. Hartlib, iu his ‘ Complete Husbandman,’ 
published in 1659, recommends the sowing of nonsuch or 
yellow clover, under the name of hop-trefoil, from having 
seen a chalky down in Kent, without any other than a 
scanty vegetation of this plant, ‘ maintaining many great 
sheep and very lusty, so that they were even fit for the 
butcher.’ 
“ The seventeenth century is further distinguished iu the 
annals of husbandry, by the first cultivation of any of the 
true grasses for hay or pasture, which is thus recorded in 
Dr. Plot’s ‘Oxfordshire,’ published in 1677: ‘They have 
lately sown ray-grass, or the Gramen loliaceum, by which 
they improve any cold, sour, clay-weeping ground, for which 
it is best, but good also for drier upland grounds, especially 
light, stony, or sandy land, which is unfit for sainfoin. It 
was first sown iu the cliiltern parts of Oxfordshii’e, and 
since brought nearer Oxford by one Eustace, an ingenious 
husbandman of Islip, who, though at first laughed at, has 
since been followed even by those very persons that scorned 
his experiments.’ Succeeding writers, however, do not fail 
to condemn the rye-grass as an impoverislier of the soil, 
while they affirm that its hay is not to be compared to that 
of clover or sainfoin ; the former of which seems alone to 
have had'any particular attention bestowed upon it till the 
following century. Ray, iu his ‘ History of Plants,’ pub¬ 
lished in 1688, mentions that the yellow melilot was then 
sometimes sown for the food of kine and horses; but suc¬ 
ceeding writers generally include it among agricultural 
weeds. And lucern, although introduced, was scarcely, if at 
all, subjected to field-culture prior to the seventeenth 
century. 
“ Mr. Lisle, author of ‘ Observations on Husbandry,’ 
written in 1707, states ‘that, then, clover was commonly cul¬ 
tivated in Wiltshire, Hampshire, Gloucestershire, Leicester¬ 
shire, Ac.; also, that of late years the cow-grass had ob¬ 
tained some credit as a longer-lived sort than the common 
clover;’ and he further mentions that a neighbour in 
Hampshire had ‘ sowed the wild white clover which holds 
the ground and decays not,’ the seeds of -which he received 
from Sussex, where its culture was then pi’actised. Mor¬ 
timer, who, 1721, published his ‘ Whole Art of Husbandry,’ 
relates that ‘ in Buckinghamshire they make great improve¬ 
ment of their lands by sowing them with parsley, which 
prevents the rot of sheep ; ’ and that ‘ one in the hundreds 
of Essex made a great improvement of some land by 
sowing of it with mustard-seed, for the same purpose.’ 
“ The next novelty in English field-culture seems to have 
been the whin, as appears by a letter from Colonel Charles 
Cathcart, to the Scottish Society for Improving in the 
Knowledge of Agriculture, dated London, 6th April, 1725, ! 
in which he mentions that ‘ the sowing of whius for feeding 
of cattle takes mightily about London now; ’ and that 1 
‘ this improvement comes from Wales, where it has been : 
