In practical result, the farmer who leaves his field to the generosity of nature is more judicious, because in our humid climate the soil possesses a tendency to generate the indigenous grasses, of which some are really good, and which, from their overpowering qualities, soon dispossess those that may have been sown, and form a close and excellent turf. But to sow _weeds_ is inexpressibly absurd, and this the man does who buys such a compound as that to which I have referred, or who sows them because he happens to have them by some means, and is unwilling to have them lost. Perhaps they have been collected from his own little rick of hay, which he knows to have been of the worst quality, or some stable boy has given him, or stolen for him, the dirty and perhaps fermented sweepings of a nasty hay loft, in which bad hay had been stored, and he is unwilling to throw away what he has so unluckily obtained: his _parkeen_ soon bears testimony to his imprudence: and he admits, though reluctantly, that the grass seeds which he had sown were not of the best quality, though they were procured from a _hay loft_, when he perceives that they have only introduced an artificial increase of bad herbage, which his little stock of animals would unanimously reject, if hunger did not forbid such fastidiousness. But the deluded purchaser very frequently forgets that though he has a great _bulk_ for his money, he has a bad bargain; he does not consider that the respectable seedsman, though he charges much more for his seeds, gives a far better quality in general, and does not sell _dirt_ and unprolific grass seeds in the compound which he supplies. Petty seedsmen, no doubt, do so frequently; and how can it be otherwise, when their stock is a motley contribution from farmers’ wives, hostlers, and labourers, who collect every variety of good and bad seeds from every description of meadow and soil? It is better to pay a great deal more for the best seed, of which a far lesser proportion will suffice. I can conceive but one case in which a rational farmer could deliberately use such defective seed as that which I saw in the little huckster’s shop, namely, when he is about to surrender his farm (being obligated to lay down his land with grass), and has all that unamiable and inexcusable feeling which so generally prompts men in such circumstances to act in defiance of their great Christian principle of doing unto others as we would have them do unto us. In this case, a selfish ill-natured tenant wishes to annoy his landlord, and his own innocent successor, to the utmost of his power; and, therefore, while adhering to the letter of his agreement--to sow grass seeds--he breaks it in the spirit, and very effectually, in fact, too, by substituting weeds under the denomination of grasses.