only to double but to treble and even quadruple our present production of grass, and we hope to bring all our readers to the same conclusion if they will have the patience to consider what we have to say in support of our opinion in this and the following pages. Every live American will admit that what has been done once can be done again when the circumstances under which it is done are similar; they believe that like causes produce like effects, and that what one man has accomplished another man can also accomplish, if he brings to the task the same tact and energy and skill; but we know that many farmers cut two and three tons of hay from each acre of their meadows, other farmers have cut six or seven tons from an acre. From the irrigated meadows, near Edinburgh, twenty tons have been taken per acre in six several cuttings, in the same season. If other men bring the same set of causes into operation, why should they not obtain the same results? That the enormous disparity existing between the grass crops raised by different farmers in the same county, and in different counties in the same State, is not wholly due to irremediable differences of soil and climate, but to the skill or want of skill brought to bear upon the management of the grass lands, is made very clear by an examination of the facts as they exist. We draw our proofs mainly from the State of New York because we are much more familiar with the meadows of that State than with those of the other States, but we know quite enough of these latter grass lands to be assured that the experience derived from them will fully bear out and confirm the conclusions derived from the meadows and pastures of New York. We know from official data that the average production of the meadows of the State of New York is ninety-six tons of hay from each hundred acres of meadow land, and that the average production of hay in the county of Kings (in which the city of Brooklyn is situated) is 160 tons for each hundred acres of meadow, and that this county gives a greater average production of hay than any other county in the State. This amount, however, is very much less than is produced by very many of the individual farmers in the county, not a few of these raise three tons to the acre, and some of them get five tons of hay from two cuttings in the same season, and are thus in advance of the average production, from one hundred and forty to two hundred tons to the hundred acres. There can surely be no good reason, except ignorance and carelessness, why the average production of the county should not equal that of the best farmers in it. The county of Queens lies contiguous to the county of Kings, and there is no appreciable difference between the soils or climates of the two counties, yet the average production of hay, is forty-four tons less to the hundred acres of meadow than in the county of Kings. The soil of Kings county is naturally very inferior to the soil of Onondaga county, as is shown by a comparison of the weeds and grasses growing spontaneously in the woods and uncultivated places in those counties; yet it nevertheless yields sixty tons of hay to the hundred acres more than Onondaga county does. We have sought with great care to find in the geological and meteorological reports of the State, any natural cause for this superiority of Kings county in the production of grass, but have been utterly unable to find any. There is scarcely a county in the State, except Essex, where the natural grasses growing in secluded and uncultivated spots are feebler and more sparse than they are in it; it is only in the cultivated meadows where the superiority is manifested, and it is to skill and industry that it owes its existence. On examining the reports on premium crops in the transactions of the New York State Agricultural Society, and in the transactions of other State societies, we find that active and energetic farmers are not satisfied with less than two or three tons of hay on an acre, on any soil, in any climate, or in any county of the State. Whenever a farmer really resolves that he will bring his meadows up to the standard, he always does so, if his acts correspond with his resolutions. Thus while the average hay crop of St. Lawrence county is only eightyfive tons to the hundred acres, there are many farmers who cut regularly from two to three tons to the acre, and we have been assured by a farmer of the contiguous county of Lewis, in which the average crop is 101 tons to the hundred acres, that he had a meadow that for several years had averaged five tons of hay to the acre. Since then there is nothing in the county of Kings nor in its surroundings or accessories more propitious to the growth of grass than there is in any other county, but, on the contrary, its soil is less fertile naturally, and its climate less genial than many others; and since we find, even in that county, contiguous farins, separated only by a fence from each other, where one produces grass abundantly, while the grass on the other is so poor that it hardly pays for cutting, we cannot escape from the conclusion that the marked differences observable in the productions of our meadows do not arise wholly from differences of soil or climate or aspect or luck, but from the differences in the skill and industry which have been applied to their improvement. Surely the farmers of Onondaga county can produce as much grass on their superior soil as those of Kings can produce on an inferior one, if they only set themselves earnestly to the work of accomplishing it. CAUSES OF THE INFERIORITY OF OUR MEADOWS. We can see, from what has been said, that nature offers the most magnificent premiums for efforts to improve the production of our grasses, it is therefore clearly our interest to search for the causes of our admitted deficiencies, and to learn the conditions which she imposes upon the winners of her munificent prizes. The main reason of the inferior condition of our meadows is that very few farmers ever try to improve them. It will not be denied that farmers, in general, bestow much less care, or thought, or science, or study, or labor upon their meadows than they do upon their grain lands. Not one farmer in a thousand knows the names of the grasses growing on his farm, or can discriminate between them. Grass is grass, and that is all they trouble themselves to know. Like Wordsworth's Peter Bell, "A primrose by the river's brim, Very many farmers are not aware that they have any other varieties than timothy, clover (which is not a grass) and red top growing on their farms, although they may have a dozen or twenty other species; much less do they understand the peculiar properties and the relative values of the different species. The farmer goes on to his meadow when the proper season comes, and cuts his grass and converts it into hay; this being accomplished, he thinks no more about it until the corresponding season of the ensuing year, when he goes through the same process again. In consequence of this apathetic spirit, he gives himself no trouble to reseed his meadow or to manure it, or to irrigate it, or to drain it or to protect it from being poached by cattle in autumn or in winter. Even when they are first forming their meadows after tillage, there are thousands of farmers who never sow any seed upon their lands at all, leaving it wholly to the birds and the winds and the waters to supply the necessary seed; indeed, in the western States this. plan is the rule and not the exception. Among those who really sow grass seeds on the lands intended for meadows, very few sow any other seeds than timothy and clover. In New England it is very common to sow red top (Agrostis vulga ris); in Pennsylvania, blue grass (Poa pratensis) is sometimes sown; but those who have taken this trouble, congratulate themselves on having done a very virtuous thing, and seem to think, when they have committed these few seeds to the bosom of the earth, they have done all that man can do, forgetting that in the fine old meadows of England, which are the envy of farmers, and the admiration of the world, not less than thirty different species are found growing in a single sod. There is another cause for the inferiority of our meadows which, though often overlooked, is of great importance, and this is the number of useless or noxious weeds that find place among them. We fear that if the meadows of the eastern and middle States were carefully examined it would be found that at least one-third of the plants growing in them were weeds of no intrinsic value, which are innutritious and unpalatable to the stock, and injurious to the flavor of the beef and butter. These foreign intruders injure the useful plants by their shade, and rob their roots of the nutriment existing in the soil. If the farmers of this State would rid themselves of this nuisance, it would add from ten to fifteen millions to their aggregate incomes. We have stated that there are 6,000 separate species of grass, and we know from the analogies of nature as well as from revelation, that God made nothing in vain. Each species has some special niche to fill, some separate part to play in the grand harmony of nature, each was designed to occupy a position of utility, each one is better adapted for some purpose, or for some soil or climate or locality than any other; and yet with the exception of some thirty varieties, we are quite unacquainted with their special uses and adaptations. The worst of all is, that we are contented with this ignorance, we make no efforts to dispel it; the race has lived face to face with the gramineæ for 6,000. years and the solution of this great problem has never suggested itself to them as something which would greatly advance their interests. Not long ago we noticed a large tract of Lyme grass (Elymus villosus) growing on the banks of a rivulet. We asked the owner of the land who had lived on it over thirty years, whether his cattle relished it? He told us that he did not know; he had never noticed it, and could not tell whether the cattle would eat it or not. He had seen it growing there all the time in great abundance, but never knew its name, never inquired what it was, nor what it was good for. He had never even thought whether it had a name or a use. Meadow fescue (Festuca pratensis) is a very common grass in the counties bordering on the Hudson river, constituting about one fifteenth of the crop on the meadows. When it first came into flower this year we asked the first six farmers that we met with what they called it. Not one of them could name it; they were not quite sure that they had it on their farms; they had something that looked like it, but they were not sure that it was the same. Two of them thought that it was June grass (Poa pratensis). Thedifference between the two is so marked that an intelligent farmer should no more confound them than he should confound a horse with a cow. It is well established, and farmers will readily acknowledge it, that among the few grasses that we know anything about, there is a very great difference in their nutritive value; this acknowledgment, however, is made in general terms, but when they are asked to specify the most nutritious kinds there will be as wide a difference of opinion as possible, no two will be found to agree in their specifications. Some will tell you that there is nothing like timothy (phleum pratense), others declare that orchard grass (dactylis glomerata) is the graziers sheet anchor, others cannot make sweet butter without redtop (agrostis vulgaris.) A Kentuckian will claim the supremacy for his favorite Blue-grass ( Poa pratensis). Many New Englanders claim Fowl meadow (Poa serotina) as the king of grasses. While in Old England, the primacy is given without hesitation to Ray grass (Lolium perrene.) In some parts of Maine nothing is thought to approach Meadow fox-tail (Alopecurus pratensis.) This Babel like confusion of opinions demonstrates clearly enough that we have no real knowledge on this all important subject, and that we rely only upon capricious guesses for the settlement of the problem. Chemistry it is true has offered its aid to us; analyses of some thirty species have been carefully made. No doubt these analyses are accurate and reliable; no doubt they tell us truly what alone they profess to tell, viz, the exact amount of nutritive matter in a given sample, but this unfortunately is not a reliable guide for the farmer in practical feeding. No matter how much nutritive matter there may be in the grass, if there are mechanical impediments, such as an abundance of stiff awns, to its reception into the stomach, or if the nutritive matters contained in it do not exist in such state as will per mit their assimilation by the digestive organs, or if they are mingled with injurious or poisonous matters, they might as well not exist at all as they will make neither meat, nor milk, nor wool. There are other ambiguities in the results of chemical analysis as applied to grasses. The composition of timothy for example is different when grown on a |