PREFACE
The botanical composition of the pasture is one of the best guides to its feeding value and, secondly, botanical analyses are fundamental in the study of grassland.
To recognize grasses at their flowering stage is relatively easy with the many aids that exist, but for their identification at any time throughout the season and in the close-cropped state the investigator in eastern Canada has been compelled, in the past, to rely on keys adapted to other countries with a flora different from his own. The authors of the present bulletin have compiled a key and descriptions which are applicable to Quebec and for the most part to eastern Canada as a whole. They believe, also, that their key is an improvement on existing ones, at least for their type of work. They rest their distinctions upon the morphological features of the parts above the ground, features which are constant and easily observed without disturbing the sod.
The key is the outcome of practice, not theory, and has been well tried by a series of field investigations. Such a work, unlike many scientific papers, is not of merely ephemeral interest; it loses none of its value with the passage of time. Hence, though in any one year the bulletin may be used by relatively few, its cumulative usefulness would seem to justify its publication.
GEORGE W. SCARTH
Professor of Botany,
McGill University.
PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION
The fact that the first edition of this modest bulletin, designed only to meet a local need, has met with a profuse and world wide demand, is evidence of the rising interest in grassland research. Combined, however, with a steady stream of letters of appreciation from pasture workers everywhere and even from leading taxonomists, this unexpected response has led the authors and sponsors of the bulletin to believe that a new and revised edition may prove useful.
The changes which have been made are not extensive. For the most part they are involved in systematization of the nomenclature. In addition, the review of literature is brought up to date and the habitat lists somewhat amended. The key and the descriptions of species, however, remain the same, having stood the test of experience.
G. W. S.
