Blue Grass

a valuable grass of North America. It is called also June grass, from the month in which it usually goes to seed. It grows throughout a wide range from Tennessee far into Canada. It is a durable pasture grass. It stands trampling and drouth well. It comes early in the spring and lasts until the frosts are severe. It is also one of the most nutritious grasses. It favors a flow of milk and gives stock sound bone, wind, and flesh. It gives its name to the famous Blue Grass Region of Kentucky. Blue grass forms one of the finest lawn swards known. It may be grown from seed or by transplanting sod. The latter method is that followed usually in making terraces or covering exposed banks. A thin sod sets better than a thick one, for the reason that new roots find their way sooner into the soil of the bank. The persistence of blue grass and its ability to stand dry midsummers is due to slender root-stalks that hold life like a potato and send up green blades with every shower. Seed is gathered by horse power in an open box, the front edge of which is furnished with a sort of comb which strips off the ripened seed. See Grasses; Kentucky

Grass is the forgiveness of nature--her constant benediction. Fields trampled with battle, saturated with blood, torn with the ruts of cannon, grow green again with grass, and carnage is forgotten. Streets abandoned by traffic, become grass grown like rural lanes, and are obliterated.

Forests decay, harvests perish, flowers vanish, but grass is immortal. It invades the solitude of deserts, climbs the inaccessible slopes of mountains, modifies climates and determines the history, character and destiny of nations.

Unobtrusive and patient, it has immortal vigor and aggression. Banished from the thoroughfare and the field, it bides its time to return, and when vigilance is relaxed, or the dynasty has perished, it silently resumes the throne from which it has been expelled, but which it never abdicates. It bears no blazonry of bloom to charm the senses with fragrance or splendor, but its homely hue is more enchanting than the lily or the rose. It yields no fruit in earth or air, and yet, should its harvest fail for a single year, famine would depopulate the world.--John J. Ingalls, Marvelous Blue Grass.