spaces of unoccupied soil, and the ground will not be thoroughly turfed over until you have from five to twenty varieties growing upon it. Experience has most conclusively shown that any soil will yield a larger and more nutritive crop when sown with from five to ten species of seeds than when only one or two species are growing. It has long been known to physiologists, that man absolutely requires a mixed diet; he cannot maintain the due exercise of all his faculties and functions if fed exclusively on a single article of diet, even if that article should be of the most nutritive character. It is the same with our domestic animals, they will not flourish as well on the most nutritive kind of hay of a single species as they will on a mixture, each individual of which may be inferior to the first. The animal tissues require numerous elements for their support, and these elements are furnished in greater abundance, and better adapted for assimilation by a mixture of dissimilar grasses than by any single one. Nature teaches this doctrine very clearly, independently of theoretical considerations. The horse when at liberty to choose will always leave the single one for the mixture. On a very rich old pasture which fattened one large ox and three sheep per acre, one thousand plants stood on one square foot of ground, of which nine hundred and forty were natural grasses, and sixty were creeping rooted clover and other plants; there were twenty distinct species of plants on this square foot of ground.

On a well managed water meadow, there were on a square foot, one thousand seven hundred and ninety-eight plants, embracing one thousand seven hundred and two plants of the natural grasses, and ninety-six of the clovers and other plants. Now compare this wonderful luxuriance with the produce of an equal space of land with a single species of grass. A single square foot where nothing but narrow leaved meadow grass (Poa angustifolia,) grew, contained one hundred and ninety-two plants-of meadow fox-tail (Alopecurus pratensis,) eighty-two plants-of rye grass (Lolium perrene,) seventy-five plants. Compare seventeen hundred and ninety-eight with seventy-five plants to a square foot and you will at once see how desirable and how profitable is the sowing a great variety of seeds. You will see how much is annually lost to the country for want of a greater variety of plants in our meadows and pastures, for the farmers in the United States who sow more than two kinds of seeds might be comfortably accommodated in a moderate sized church.

Let me advise you as one of the most important practical measures that you can adopt, to fill ten or twenty boxes with the soil which you intend to lay down to meadow, and sow each one with a different kind of grass seed. You will thus ascertain the adaptation of your land to different kinds of grass, and the number of plants each square foot of it is capable of maintaining.

2d-We should only sow the seeds of those grasses which come into flower at the same period. Chemical analysis and practical trials alike concur in showing that hay is most nutritive and most palatable when cut at the period of flowering; at this time it contains more sugar, starch, gum and albumin, than at any other; if suffered to stand after this these substances are converted into woody fibre and other compounds which cannot be acted on by the digestive organs, and is therefore valueless. It follows from this, that great loss is sustained by cutting together those grasses which flower at different periods. If cut when the earlier grasses are in good condition, the later ones are watery and innutritious. If cut when the later ones are ripe, the valuable constituents of the earlier ones have passed into woody fibre and other insoluable compounds. I have for many years been convinced of the wastefulness of mixing the grasses which flower at dissimilar periods in the same meadow; but I was never so thoroughly convinced of it as I have been during the last summer. In many meadows where one-half of the grass has consisted of meadow fescue and Kentucky blue grass, which flower in June, has been left absolutely to perish until the timothy had ripened; and in many cases even the timothy has been suffered to deteriorate seriously in order that the red-top, which is a fortnight later, might have time to ripen. Nothing more strongly marks the utter want of forethought and system in everything pertaining to grass culture, than the almost universal allowance of grasses in the same meadow which cannot be cut at any time without spoiling some of them.

I have heard some farmers complain that horses and working cattle are apt to scour when fed on hay cut while in blossom. I have never seen this result myself, and in one or two cases where the complaint has been made, I have satisfied myself that the difficulty has arisen from bad curing, and I have a strong suspicion that if every case could be examined thoroughly it would be found that the scouring was due to this cause rather than to cutting the grass in blossom.

3d-The seeds sown should be exactly adapted to the soil and climate. This rule is too obvious for argument. It is clear that if seeds which will only germinate and flourish in sandy soils are sown on wet clays they will be sickly and unprofitable; and so on the other hand, we cannot expect those that are adapted to soils where potash abounds to flourish in soils that are almost wholly calcareous. And yet, although this is so clear, and so fully commends itself to the approval of every man, yet no one thinks for a moment of practicing it. If a farmer wishes to lay down a meadow, no matter whether it is wet or dry, clayey or sandy, calcareous or peaty, the same uniform timothy and clover is universally applied and if these do not grow he is quite contented with a crop of weeds. As I have before remarked, there is some kind of grass just adapted to every soil under the sun, and the intelligent farmer in the "good time coming" will never rest until he finds from actual experiment, the exact species just calculated for his own land.

4th-We must stock our meadows with the most nutritive grasses. If you have looked at a table of grass analyses, and if you compared them, you must have been struck with the wide difference in nutritive value which exists among them. There have been two attempts at a chemical determination of these values on an extended scale; the first by Mr. Sinclair under the guidance of Sir Humphrey Davy, of 113 varieties; the second by Mr. Way, chemist to the Royal Agricultural Society, of 21 varieties; besides these, we are in possession of several analyses of separate grasses by other distinguished chemists.

Mr. Sinclair's method consisted in submitting the green or dry grasses to the action of hot water so long as it continued to take up any soluble matter; the solution being then evaporated to dryness the solid residuum was weighed, this was taken as representing the absolute weight of nutritive matter contained in the grass under examination. This process is now known to be inaccurate, as vegetable albumin which contains the greatest amount of the muscle forming elements is not taken up by boiling water and the presence of this substance was not therefore brought to light by Sinclair.

Indeed, Sir Humphrey Davy, who furnished the process, seems to have had much less confidence in its accuracy than Mr. Sinclair. Sir H. remarked, that the nutritive matter of grasses or

soluble products, consists for the most part of five distinct vegetable substances, viz.-mucilaginous, saccharine, albuminous, bitter extractive and saline matter, and that "it is probable that the excellence of the different articles as food will be found in a great measure proportioned to the quantities of soluble or nutritive matters they afford; but still these quantities cannot be regarded as absolutely denoting their value,-albuminous or glutinous matters have the characters of animal substances; sugar is more nourishing, and extractive less nourishing, than any other principles composed of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen; certain combinations of these substances likewise may be more nourishing than others."

Mr. Way, guided by the more accurate knowledge which modern researches in chemistry have disclosed, has been enabled to give a more trustworthy exhibition of the real compositiou of the grasses than we have heretofore possessed, and has disclosed to us, as accurately as chemistry can do it, their relative values in the feeding of animals.

It is to be regretted, however, that he has omitted the analysis of several of the most important of our grasses, such as the redtop (Agrostis vulgaris,) blue grass (Poa compressa,) bastard fowl meadow (Glyceria nervata,) and fowl meadow (Poa serotina.) Still his experiments constitute one of the most valuable contributions which chemistry has ever made to agriculture.

These experiments show that 100 lbs. of quaking grass (Briza media,) will give 28 lbs. more of dry hay than 100. lbs of vernal grass (Anthoxanthum odoratum.) That it will require 237 lbs. of vernal grass to supply an animal with as much of the muscle making elements as is afforded by 100 lbs. of timothy.

It will take 319 lbs. of soft brome grass to lay as much fat on an animal as 100 lbs. of timothy would; 100 lbs. of timothy will support the respiratory process as long, and afford as much animal heat as 260 lbs. of vernal grass.

I think most of you will be surprised at the disparity of value among the grasses as disclosed by these numerical statements, and if they make a tolerable approximation to practical accuracy, you will be convinced that your interest as farmers demands that you should pay more attention to this subject than you have heretofore given it. I should, however, be untrue to my own .convictions, if I did not warn you against too suddenly accepting the indications of pure chemistry as a conclusive guide in practice, for there is

reason to fear that sometimes, they may be misunderstood or misinterpreted, and thus lead to dangerous errors. Chemistry may show that there is a great amount of nourishing matter in a given species of grass, yet, it may not be available to the cattle consuming it, and if so, it will be almost worthless to the farmer. Thus, a grass may contain any amount of sugar, starch or albumin, stored up in its tissues and juices, but if its leaves are armed with sharp spines as the thistle, or with stinging hairs as the nettle, or if for any mechanical cause it is rejected by animals, it will avail nothing; or it may have some poisonous principle which is instinctively rejected, or some bitter or nauseous secretion mixed with its nutritive matter, or its oder may be repulsive so that cattle will not eat it. In either of these cases, it is of no use to the farmer, even though chemistry shows it to contain much which under other conditions would possess high value. There may be cases, too, where cattle will eat of a grass which contains injurious substances. Sorghum, according to the results of chemical analysis, is rich in nutriment; but on soils which abound in the soluble silicates, it becomes thickly coated with a substance like glass. While I am writing this, I read of the death of a number of cattle from eating sorghum, the sharp angles of the glassy coating having cut through the coats of their stomachs. While procuring my specimen of the Phragmites communis (reed grass,) I cut my fingers deeply in two or three places with its siliceous coating. Of course, this glass may be too thin to actually cut through the stomach, and yet thick enough to irritate the mucous surfaces to such a degree as to prevent them from gaining either strength or fat, in either of which cases the nourishment contained in the plant could not be converted into meat or milk.

These considerations show the necessity of verifying the chemical indications by actual trials at the manger, conducted with all possible care and precaution to guard against ambiguities and mistakes. I have searched in vain among the agricultural journals of both Europe and America, for the record of such experimentsif they exist I have been unable to find them. Nothing would tend more to the advancement of agricultural science and to the augmentation of agricultural profits, than a thorough settlement of the exact nutritive values of the different species of grass. To accomplish this result, it is necessary to take at least six milch cows, divided as nearly as may be into two equal lots of three each. Some species, as timothy for instance, should be selected