ON THE FOLLY OF SOWING BAD SEEDS BECAUSE THEY ARE CHEAP.
BY MARTIN DOYLE.
A few months ago I saw in the shop window of a petty seedsman near Dublin, an advertisement announcing the sale of grass seeds at two shillings and eightpence per barrel of four bushels. I had the curiosity to examine those seeds, which, as may be supposed from their price, were a compound of the germs of weeds, with a small proportion of grass seeds intermixed. I have no doubt that some poor and uncalculating petty farmers were silly enough to purchase this trash on the penny-wise and pound-foolish principle, and I well know that there is no point on which greater ignorance prevails than on that of a proper selection of grass seeds, although they should be sown with an accurate regard to the nature of the soil, the number of years during which the land is to be left in meadow or in pasturage, each of which conditions also requires a different description of seeds.
The successful establishment of grass seeds depends materially, besides the clean and pulverised state of the land, on their adaptation to the soil; and if that be in a state perfectly fit for their reception, a much smaller quantity of seed will be sufficient than under the opposite circumstances; and if the land be in a foul state previously to laying it down, it is clear that the sowing of weed seeds, with a trifling and uncertain admixture of true grass seeds, cannot render it cleaner.
In practical result, the farmer who leaves his field to the generosity of nature is more judicious, because in our humid climate the soil possesses a tendency to generate the indigenous grasses, of which some are really good, and which, from their overpowering qualities, soon dispossess those that may have been sown, and form a close and excellent turf. But to sow weeds is inexpressibly absurd, and this the man does who buys such a compound as that to which I have referred, or who sows them because he happens to have them by some means, and is unwilling to have them lost. Perhaps they have been collected from his own little rick of hay, which he knows to have been of the worst quality, or some stable boy has given him, or stolen for him, the dirty and perhaps fermented sweepings of a nasty hay loft, in which bad hay had been stored, and he is unwilling to throw away what he has so unluckily obtained: his parkeen soon bears testimony to his imprudence: and he admits, though reluctantly, that the grass seeds which he had sown were not of the best quality, though they were procured from a hay loft, when he perceives that they have only introduced an artificial increase of bad herbage, which his little stock of animals would unanimously reject, if hunger did not forbid such fastidiousness.
But the deluded purchaser very frequently forgets that though he has a great bulk for his money, he has a bad bargain; he does not consider that the respectable seedsman, though he charges much more for his seeds, gives a far better quality in general, and does not sell dirt and unprolific grass seeds in the compound which he supplies. Petty seedsmen, no doubt, do so frequently; and how can it be otherwise, when their stock is a motley contribution from farmers’ wives, hostlers, and labourers, who collect every variety of good and bad seeds from every description of meadow and soil? It is better to pay a great deal more for the best seed, of which a far lesser proportion will suffice. I can conceive but one case in which a rational farmer could deliberately use such defective seed as that which I saw in the little huckster’s shop, namely, when he is about to surrender his farm (being obligated to lay down his land with grass), and has all that unamiable and inexcusable feeling which so generally prompts men in such circumstances to act in defiance of their great Christian principle of doing unto others as we would have them do unto us.
In this case, a selfish ill-natured tenant wishes to annoy his landlord, and his own innocent successor, to the utmost of his power; and, therefore, while adhering to the letter of his agreement—to sow grass seeds—he breaks it in the spirit, and very effectually, in fact, too, by substituting weeds under the denomination of grasses.
A prudent man who is not a perfect judge himself of the matter, will first consider the quality and nature of his land before he sows grass seeds, and then consult Lawson’s Tables, which furnish precise information on every particular as to the quality and quantity of seeds for all soils, and whether for one, two, three years, or for permanent pasture, and he will endeavour to obtain what he wants accordingly; not that this is often an easy matter of accomplishment, for few seedsmen have the varieties sufficiently distinct, although they are generally polite enough to say that they have them so.
But how can they be always sure of this? We know the great difficulty, even in botanical gardens, of keeping the kinds separate, and the rapidity with which grass seeds become commingled. The only certain way is to raise the desired seeds in detached portions of land, perfectly clean, and carefully cleared of intruding plants. Can the seedsman, with the most honourable intentions and greatest caution, be himself secure from the effects of negligence or wilful imposition?
But to return to the case of the poor man who thinks he has a bargain when he buys four bushels of bad grass seeds for half-a-crown. Though he sees the bad effects in the inferiority of his herbage, and at first lays the blame on the proper source, he actually persuades himself afterwards (when He, who in his bounty doth “clothe the grass of the field” throughout the whole earth, has covered the surface of his field with natural herbage) that to the seeds which he had sown two or three years previously, he is mainly to attribute what the prodigality of Nature, or, more properly, the munificence of God, has supplied.
The man who sows bad or ill-suited grass seeds, merely because he has obtained them, and is unwilling to lose the acquisition, reminds me of an old lady who was for many years of her life in the habit of giving annually (in the spring of the year) to her grandchildren, a regular course of sulphur and treacle mixed up together, whether the recipients required it or not.
On one occasion, a new servant maid, unacquainted with this system, was sent for the usual quantity of flour of sulphur, but by some mismanagement she brought home a pound of flour of mustard. Her mistress sent her back to the grocer from whom it had been bought, but from previous jealousies or quarrels unnecessary to detail, he refused to take it back again. The poor maid could not herself be expected to substitute the required sulphur, and the old lady was determined that the mustard should not be lost. She accordingly mixed it with the treacle instead of the other substance, and actually ladled every particle of the compound down the throats of her grandchildren and the servant maid, who consented to take her share as a punishment for her inattention, until the whole mixture was consumed. The old lady was less foolish than the farmer who sows the seeds of weeds, because she had previously ascertained that the flour of mustard was harmless; but the husbandman must know that those seeds which are not genuine grass seeds are noxious to his land, by rendering it foul, and it is therefore extravagance and not economy on his part to use bad seeds, merely to save waste.
I am sorry to say that the same indifference prevails among the lower classes of our farmers as to seed in general. On this subject I shall again occupy a page of the Journal in an early number.
A Lazy Dog.—Dr Arnaud d’Antilli, one day talking with the Duke de Laincourt upon the new philosophy of M. Descartes, maintained that beasts were mere machines; that they had no sort of reason to direct them; and that when they cried or made a noise, it was only one of the wheels of the clock or machine that made it. The Duke, who was of a different opinion, replied, “I have now in my kitchen two turnspits which take their turns regularly every other day to get into the wheel; one of them not liking his employment, hid himself on the day he should have wrought, so that his companion was forced to mount the wheel in his stead; when released, by crying and wagging his tail, he made a sign for those in attendance to follow him. He immediately conducted them to a garret, where he dislodged the idle dog and bit him severely.”—Dublin University Magazine.