19 JANUARY 1929, Page 15

No people in the world know so much about good

grass, especially for lawns, as the English ; and, since Dr. Stapledon is perhaps the greatest of realists and specialists, one must add the Welsh. The Americans, whose golfers have already founded a research organization, come next. One or two of our leading seed firms have a really world-wide reputation, and are called in wherever in the world spacious lawns of grass arc required. Yet still even within Britain greens and fairways are pauperized, wrong manures at extravagant prices are put down, unsuitable grasses encouraged, and deleterious animals encouraged, and half the processes carried through at the wrong seasons. I know various foreign links of some fame where - every attempt to encourage grass has failed, and where the surface is mostly mud and stone, where dwarf thistles have been multiplied, where daisies have been substituted for grass, where there is more pearlwort and plaintain than grass ; and in each case it is safe to say that the evil result is due in part to entire ignorance of the effects of the modern mowing machine on various plants.

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