Literature.
Spillman, Farm Grasses of the United States, Orange Judd Company, New York City ; Sutton, Permanent and Temporary Pastures, London ; Farmers' Bulletins of the United States Depart ment of Agriculture, Washington, D. C., No. 111, the Farmer's Interest in Good Seed, and No. 123, Red Clover Seed ; Division of Agrostology, United States Department of Agriculture, Bulletin No. 14, Economic Grasses; Fraser, Pastures and Meadows, Farmers' Reading-Course, Bulletin No. 10, New York State College of Agriculture, Ithaca, New York ; Same, Pastures and Meadows, Report of the Bureau of Farmers' Institutes of New York, 1903, pp. 24G-295 ; Flint, Grasses and Forage Plants, J. H. Sanders Publishing Company, Chicago ; Shaw, Grasses and Clovers, etc., Northrup, King & Co., Minneapolis, 1895; Same, Clovers, Orange Judd Company, New York City; Wallace, Clover Cul ture, Iowa Homestead, Des Moines, Iowa, 1892; Beal, The Grasses of North America, two vols., Henry Holt & Co., 1897 ; Fream, The Complete Grazier, 1893 ; Killebrew, Grasses and Forage Plants. In addition, there are very many excellent discussions in the publications of the national De partment of Agriculture and of the various state and provincial experiment stations. [See references to literature under various articles on forage plants and under the article on Grasses.] Grasses and Clovers Used in Meadows and Pastures.
The number of American grasses is well-nigh countless. It is not the purpose of this Cyclopedia to consider all of them. The best that can be done is to set forth the more important features of those that are of leading economic importance, and to suggest to the reader their uses and range of adaptation. The present article treats chiefly of the cultivated grasses and clovers. The succeeding article considers native meadows and pastures for the ranges.
Place in the cropping system.
With reference to the position occupied by the grasses in the cropping system, we may divide the United States more or less arbitrarily into six divisions. The first and most important of these divisions comprises in a general way those states in which timothy and clover and blue-grass are the principal constituents of arable grass-lands. This
region lies north of a line from Virginia to Kansas, and east of a line from Kansas to eastern North Dakota. In the Appalachian region, and in the lime stone soils of central Tennessee, are found southern extensions of the area, while New England, for the most part, should be considered separately. Out lying areas are found more or less generally dis tributed in the northern half of the Rocky moun tale states and the northern half of the Pacific coast states. In this region, which we may appro priately call the timothy region, the type of rota tion which prevails very generally on farms where rotation is practiced is corn, followed by small grain (usually wheat in the southern part and oats in the north), with timothy and clover sown with the small grain. On the best farms the grass is cut for hay one or two years and is sometimes pastured one or two years more before being broken up for corn. On poorly managed farms, which are by far the more numerous, the grass is left down for an indefinite number of years until weeds especially adapted to meadow lands creep in, rendering the hay of inferior quality and greatly reducing the yield. Because of this practice, the average yield of timothy and clover hay in this country is only about a ton and a quarter per acre, whereas it could easily be made two tons by a proper system of rotation, combined with the best use of farm manures.
In New England we find a marked modification of the rotation type prevailing generally over the timothy region. On many of the best New England farms the small grain is omitted from this rotation, the grass seeds being sown directly in the corn at the last cultivation. This operation in New Eng land is called "stocking" the land. On good New England dairy-farms it is customary each year to plow up about a third or a fourth of the grass land which most needs renewing. This plowed land is then fertilized, planted to corn (sometimes peas and oats or other cereal crops), and then restocked with grass at the earliest opportunity.