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AGRICULTURAL SURVEY

CHAPTER VIII.

Grass Natural and Artificial.

SECTION I.

THE Banks of the Trent and of the Soar produce very good natural grass, which is applied to the use of dairying, feeding and mowing, as has been mentioned more particularly in speaking of the employment of land in the several districts.

The kinds of artificial grasses sown are—For a single crop to break up again for wheat, red or broad clover, (trifolium prateuse) to lie two or three years or more in pasture, white clover(trifolium repens) trefoil(medicago Jupulina) ray grass(lolium perenne and rib grass(plantago lanceolata) the usual quantities of each of which has been mentioned under the head of cultivation, sometimes a small quantity of red clover is mixed.*

Burnet(poterium sanguisorba) grows naturally in plenty in the Trent meadows, but is not that I know of sowed.

Sainfoin(hedysarum onobrychis) has been tried on sand and gravel, and on a redloam with skerry stone underneath,

* Vide Mr. Calvert’s letter in Appendix No. FX. Dr. Coke of Brookhill, in the lime and coal distri€t says, the grasses which are cultivated for pasture are red and white clover, trefoil, rib-grass, ray-grass, and those seeds which are the natural preduétion of the soil, and which consist of the anthoxanthum vernale, and several of the festucas, some of the aira and avena of the Linnean system: the former of these grasses is a most useful addition to these pastures, from its early appearance in the spring, and from the sweetness which it affords to the hay, of which it forms a part. The festuca fluitans, which is mentioned by Stillingficet, in his Botanical Essays, is an inhabitant of the swampy parts of this neighbourhood, and is always sought for by cattle with the greatest avidity,