PASTURES OF THE SOUTH-WEST. 
219 
We now come to one of the most striking grasses in our west- 
country pastures, and by our roadsides ; namely, the Cocksfoot, 
Dactylis Glomerata, a tall handsome plant, especially when in 
flower, throwing up a profusion of radical foliage, and rooting deep 
down in the soil. This is the orchard grass of North America, and 
in the orchards of the south-west, and all through the kingdom, it 
is most abundant — a heavy cropper, and growing after the scythe 
faster than any other. Its abundance and hardihood makes it a 
staple winter grass in brakes, copses, and coarse orchards, affording 
grateful herbage to cattle grazing in such places. 
One of the very best sheep grasses in Britain, and one growing 
on every hillside west of Exeter, is the Crested Dogstail, Cynosurus 
Qristatus. In some parts it is said to associate with Hard Fescue, 
and the two together form a first-rate feeding-ground ; but I have 
never known it so associated in Cornwall. 
Perhaps the most universally conspicuous plant of all in our 
thick-floored meadows is the Meadow Soft Grass, Holcus lanatus, 
known in the North as " Yorkshire Whites." Its silvery -purple 
panicle becomes much divaricated as it matures. 
This particular grass has long been held in light esteem, but 
more perhaps by the closet naturalist than by the practical farmer, 
who, watching his herds as they feed, and his pastures as they 
grow, sees that Meadow Soft Grass abounds in his very best home 
floors of bullock land. Where the ox bites there will come the 
grasses most suited for his food, which is one of the most admirable 
arrangements of Providence. True, cattle may not affect this 
species so much as some others ; but regarding the above fact who 
can doubt that it forms the piece de resistance ? 
The older writers and most men of letters have urged the vital 
necessity of having good seeds to start a pasture. Good seeds are 
valuable, and the farmer will always sow the very best he can get ; 
but he knows at the same time that good seeds mean less than 
good treatment, and to manure well and graze close are the two 
prime laws which rule all pastures. Take a piece of fallow ground, 
drop never a grass seed, but let cattle stray around occasionally, 
and lay on the manure, and in a season or two you will have a 
pasture fit for the White Bull that bore off Europa. From thence 
will gradually disappear all weeds and weedy grasses. Couch grass 
will go, Black Squitch will go, all the coarser herbage will die 
out before this stamping and manuring ; and there will gradually 
