Of the many grasses (popularly known as such) native to this country, or of the intro duced grasses that have become established here, comparatively few are of economic importance. Their principal use is as food for live stock. Most of them grow too sparsely to be important for this purpose, and many of them are not nutritious enough to make them valuable as food. A considerable number, however, are both nutritious and palatable to stock. Yet the number of these which are propagated artifi cially is exceedingly small when compared with the total number of species. This is partly ac counted for by the fact that a few species are surpassingly useful by reason of abundant growth, ease of propagation, nutritive value and palatability. When such a grass becomes established in a region to which it is adapted i the effort to find other valuable sorts in a measure ceases. But there are vast sections of country, particularly in the cotton-producing States, and the arid and semi-arid West, where good grasses, adapted to local soil and climatic conditions, have not yet become established as field crops. Not that there are no good grasses known in these regions, for there are many of them, but it happens that these grasses are not easily propagated or have some characteristc which renders them undesirable. The well known and valuable buffalo grass dactyloides) of the West and Southwest is an example in point. It is one of the most nutritious and palatable of all the grasses, and produces abundant feed, but it produces very little seed, and that only on trailing, vine-like stems, from which it is impractical to harvest it. Many of the grasses which formerly constituted important factors on the ranges of the West, and which are eminently adapted to the climatic and soil conditions there, are rendered useless on cultivated lands by reason of their poor seed habits. What the breeder's art may accomplish in rendering these now useless grasses useful, by improving their seed habit, remains to be seen. The leading tame grasses of the country are as follows: Timothy (Mile= The acre age of this grass is the United States is twice as great as that of all other cultivated grasses put together. It may be said to be the hay grass of the country. Its supremacy is due first of all to its excellent seed habits. The seed from an acre of it will seed a larger acreage than is the case with any grass. The seed is easily harvested, and retains its vitality for several years. It also produces relatively large yields of hay, which, although not so nutritious as the hay from some other grasses, is eaten readily by all kinds of stock. It is particularly valuable for horses, because of its favorable physiological effect on the di gestive apparatus. Owners of livery stables, whose horses are liable to be subjected to hard driving after heavy feeding, will feed no other hay when timothy is available. Timothy is usually sown with wheat, in fall, at the rate of about eight pounds of seed per acre, the seed being cast on the bare ground behind the drillplows. Clover is then frequently added, at the same rate, in early spring, though farmers who raise much hay for sale prefer to omit the clover, as the pure timothy is preferred by horsemen. After the wheat crop is harvested, the grass is ordinarily used for pasture in the fall. The next season a large yield of hay is obtained (one to three or more tons per acre, according to the fertility of the soil), but the yield decreases thereafter to such an extent that the best farmers do not attempt to maintain a timothy meadow for more than two seasons, though such fields are frequently used for pasture for two or three years longer, before breaking them up for corn. In the latter case, bluegrass seed (Poapratensis) is frequently scattered on the timothy sod, so that the pasture consists largely of bluegrass. The production of timothy hay is confined largely to the region north of and including the eastern third of Kansas and Nebraska, and to certain restricted localities in the Rocky Mountains and Pacific Coast States; but timothy hay is used almost ex clusively by horsemen in the large cities of all sections of the country.
Kentucky Bluegrass, June Grass or Blue grass (Poa Rratensis).— Next to timothy this is the most important grass in this country, though it seldom grows large enough to cut for hay. It is undoubtedly the leading pasture grass in America. Its distribution is nearly identical with that of timothy. It does not ex tend south of the Ohio River except in a circular area about 100 miles in diameter in Kentucky, with a point 25 miles north of Lexington as a centre; and in certain portions of Tennessee and the mountainous portions of the Southern States. In Kentucky and Tennessee its dis tribution is closely confined to the Cambrian rocks, which are rich in both lime and mag nesia. Perhaps no other grass is so acceptable to stock as bluegrass. It is one of the most nutritious of grasses, and it is a notable fact that stock raising has never become a prominent feature of farming anywhere in the United States outside of the bluegrass region, except of course in the range country ofthe West, where ranching rather than farming is the prevailing form of agriculture. The best blue grass pastures are those which are kept free from weeds and bushes, not cropped too closely and constantly, and upon which fattening stock are fed grain and mill products. Such pastures last indefinitely, but are hardly productive enough to justify their maintenance except on rough lands not well adapted to the cultivation of ordinary crops. So highly prized are the bluegrass pastures in many, sections that .they are seldom broken up; for it is a difficult mat ter to establish a good bluegrass pasture, a process requiring several years.
The term millet is applied to three more or less distinct groups of grasses. The more common millets in this country are the foxtail millets (Cluetochloa). They include the well-known foxtail, a common weed springing up in grain fields after harvest, and the hay producing varieties, Hungarian grass, German millet, golden millet and a few others, all annuals which produce an abundant crop of coarse hay of rather inferior quality. They are grown mostly as catch crops, being sown in late spring and early summer on fields where other crops have failed because of drouth. They are hence confined largely to the semi humid region extending from North Dakota to Texas. Millet hay, when fed to horses that have no other roughness, has the peculiar prop erty of producing acute rheumatic affections of the joints ; but when fed with other hay, the damage from this source is very slight. An other group of millets, frequently called broom corn millets, are varieties of the species Patti cum miliaceum. These are little known in this country, though they constitute important bread producing crops in central Asia. A third kind of millet, usually known as Japanese millet, is a variety of the common barnyard grass, Paul cum crus-galli. Some forms of this grass are common weeds all over this country. Some of the varieties produce large crops of coarse but palatable hay, particularly on wet lands in the Southern States. The seed of one variety is used for food by certain Indian tribes of the Southwest. Other varieties are similarly used in the Old World. This group of millets prob ably deserves more attention than it has yet re ceived in this country.
Redtop (Agrostis This grass and its variety vulgaris are widely distributed in this country, occupying the whole of the timo thy and bluegrass region and extending consid erably farther south; but the only section in which it may be said to hold first place is in a limited area in southeastern Illinois and ad jacent parts of Kentucky. In this section, prac tically all of the redtop seed of the country is produced. It is rather distinctly a wet-land grass, and is usually a valuable constituent of meadows and pastures on moist lands in all parts of the country except the extreme South. It is also well adapted to the acid soils of the Atlantic seaboard, where it is frequently used in meadow and pasture mixtures. In yield of hay it is distinctly inferior to timothy, but it withstands cropping and trampling by stock much better. Although quite nutritious, it is not nearly so well relished by stock as timothy or bluegrass.