6 JULY 1929, Page 20

The discovery has, as usual, stimulated invention. I described after

last year's harvest some crop-drying experi- ments on Major Lyon's farm in Cheshire. The system has been carried further at Oxford, and the I.C.I. are experimenting with two systems. More than this : grass, still retaining its greenness, can now be so compressed, and pounded, sliced or even powdered that it provides a food not so very different, even in form, from linseed or bean cake. These grass tablets, some as hard and shiny as linoleum, are attractive to the eye, and singularly easy to handle or transport. It would not be rash to prophesy that before long compressed grass cake, grown in England, will be a direct competitor to im- ported cake, and when that happens grass, just now regarded as the thinnest and most " extensive" of crops (as bad grass always will be), will become a really intensive crop as the call it. There is no reason why the trimmings of a golf links or even the cuttings from a lawn may not be preserved and prove of commercial value.