272
TUSSOCK-GRASS.
[Chap. IX.
1842
would be relished if made into hay, but cattle will eat the dry thatch off the roof of a house in winter; their preference to Tussock-grass being so great, that they scent it a considerable distance, and use every effort to get at it. Some bundles, which had been stacked in the yard at the back of Government House, were quickly detected, and the cattle in the village made, every night, repeated attempts to reach them."
"Since the above was written, the Tussock has been used abundantly when made into hay, being preferred by cattle even to the green state of any of the other excellent grasses in the Falklands. Governor Moody informs me that in his garden it grows rapidly, and improves by cutting. There is, however, one drawback to the value of the Tussock: it is a perennial grass of slow growth, and some disappointment has already been experienced in England from this cause. Each Tussock consists of many hundreds of culms, springing together from a mass of roots, which have required a long series of years to attain their great and productive size. Our cultivated specimens in the Royal Gardens of Kew, now nearly three years old, are in a fair way of becoming good Tussocks; for the quantity of stems from each root, the produce of one seed, is incalculably more than any other grass throws up, and these are already forming a ball of root-fibres, which in time will form a mound. But this ball, now scarcely six inches across, and not two in height, must have grown to six or eight