A prudent man who is not a perfect judge himself of the matter, will first consider the quality and nature of his land before he sows grass seeds, and then consult Lawson’s Tables, which furnish precise information on every particular as to the quality and quantity of seeds for all soils, and whether for one, two, three years, or for permanent pasture, and he will endeavour to obtain what he wants accordingly; not that this is often an easy matter of accomplishment, for few seedsmen have the varieties sufficiently distinct, although they are generally polite enough to say that they have them so. But how can they be always sure of this? We know the great difficulty, even in botanical gardens, of keeping the kinds separate, and the rapidity with which grass seeds become commingled. The only certain way is to raise the desired seeds in detached portions of land, perfectly clean, and carefully cleared of intruding plants. Can the seedsman, with the most honourable intentions and greatest caution, be himself secure from the effects of negligence or wilful imposition? But to return to the case of the poor man who thinks he has a bargain when he buys four bushels of bad grass seeds for half-a-crown. Though he sees the bad effects in the inferiority of his herbage, and at first lays the blame on the proper source, he actually persuades himself afterwards (when _He_, who in his bounty doth “clothe the grass of the field” throughout the whole earth, has covered the surface of his field with natural herbage) that to the seeds which he had sown two or three years previously, he is mainly to attribute what the prodigality of Nature, or, more properly, the munificence of God, has supplied. The man who sows bad or ill-suited grass seeds, merely because he has obtained them, and is unwilling to _lose_ the acquisition, reminds me of an old lady who was for many years of her life in the habit of giving annually (in the spring of the year) to her grandchildren, a regular course of sulphur and treacle mixed up together, whether the recipients required it or not.