The Grasses Of Tennessee - Including Cereals And Forage Plants Including Cereals and Forage Plants

The Grasses Of Tennessee: Including Cereals And Forage Plants - 1878 - PREFACE. - In the preparation of this work all available sources of information to be had in Europe or America have been consulted. Free us haa been made of the standard works of Gray, Flint, Gould and Howard, and also of the rdports of the Agricultural Department at Wdshington, as well as the numerous State reports. The admirable works of Prof. S. W. Johnson, of Yale College, have supplied me with valuable information. I have had access to the various publications of Baron I Liebig, the pioneer in agricultural science, and have also derived much aid from the painstaking researches of Wolff and Knop, of Germany of Johnson, Way, Sinclair, Mechi, Voelcker, Lawes and Gilbert, of England, and from the reports of the Highland Society of Scotland. The little work of Edmund Blurphy, of Ireland, has been suggestive. I have relied mainly, however, upon the experience, observation and success the best farmers of our own State. Reference is made I elsewhere to the great assistance received from Dr. W. M. Clarke, Dr. Gattinger and Prof. Hunter Nicholson. The work is the result of much labor, and I indulge the hope that it may be instrumental in directing the minds of our farmers to the importance of the grasses in the solulution of the problem of agricultural thrift and prosperity. It is due to Mrs. Clare Snivelj, of Nashville, to say that the cuts which appear in the work were executed by her, many of them from original drawings. Several verbal errors escaped the proof reader, many of which were detected and corrected before the full edition of the book was worked off. On page 14, fifteenth line from the top, there is an errorin the a statement made. There are in fact about eighty species of sedges and rushes found growing in the State, very few of which are eaten by cattle. The broomsedge, so called, is not n sedge, but a true grass, belonging to the genus andropogon, and for1118 thechief surnmer grazing of the Cumberland Nountains. It should be called broom grass. J. B. KILLEBREW. July 27, 1878. To His Excellency, Governor James D. Porter Herewith is submitted n treatise on the Grasses and Forage plants of Tennessee. The geograpllical position of Tennessee eminently fits it to become a great grain and stock-growing State. In 1840, Tennessee was the largest corn-producing State in the Union. Difficult and tedious tranaportation made it necessary to feed this corn at home, and so in 1850, it took the foremost rank in the production of hogs. The Northwest, with its virgin soil, was able to supply meat and bread cheaper than Tennessee, and it became necessary for her people to turn their attention in another direction. The demand for mules by the cotton-growing States opened a, new avenue to agl. icultural industry, so that in 1860, she became the largest mule-producing State in the Union. The shock given to all her industries by the war, and especially to her agricu tural interests, by the destruction of her labor system, so disabled her that she bore off no prize in the census returns of 1870. The destruc tidn of her labor system, however, has tended to direct the minds of her farmers, to a system of agriculture in which less labor will be required. The sowing of more grass, and the raising of beef-cattle and improved hogs and h e e z G ill rohnblsyh ow the direction of her growth in the future....