The Editor's Preface

The men and the women who wrote this book are agronomists, economists, farmers, teachers, military men, students of nutrition, husbandman, foresters, entomologists, agrostologists, engineers, workers in conservation, and ecologists. They are experts in many different disciplines. They represent all sections of the United States and many points of view. They plead no selfish case, therefore, when they agree that grassland agriculture is the most important single element in American farming today.

This book is the first word, so to speak, on the subject of grass, legumes, and the associated herbage, for, regardless of its importance, grass has been a comparatively neglected matter-of-course. We hope it will not be the last word, because there is still much to be learned about subjects so diverse and plants so versatile.

It has many articles on how farmers, ranchers, poultrymen, livestock raisers, dairymen, and the conservationists can grow and use grasses and legumes. And because those plants are so basic to farming and living, discussions of them must include a great deal about soils, geography, agricultural history, economics and marketing, genetics, public programs, and natural resources.

It is therefore a book for city people as well as for farmers. It contains information on grass for lawns, parks, roadsides, playgrounds, and so on, but more than that, it is about a subject of concern to everyone, wherever he lives or whatever he does for a living.

We hope the reader will read the whole book, but we have organized it so that if need be he can use only the chapters that pertain to his problems and still get an idea of the kinds, values, and adaptation of grass.

The four parts progress from the general aspects of the subject to the more specific.

First is an examination of grass as it applies to people anywhere. The emphasis is on livestock and soils and conservation.

Next is a study of grass as it is used in the regions of the United States, the emphasis being on varieties and uses.

The third part is a handbook that considers the nature and identification of the most important and most useful grasses, legumes, and associated plants.

Finally comes a section of tables, charts, lists of plant names, recommendations of seedings and mixtures, references to further reading, and the index. The material has been put together there for economy and convenience; for many farmers and students the last part will be the most valuable of the entire volume.

Grateful acknowledgment is made of the help given by the Division of Typography and Design of the Government Printing Office on the format of the book.

Louis H. Anderson, of the Office of Information, helped in many mechanical details involved in the transferring of hundreds of thousands of typewritten words into type.

Miss Leta Hughey, of Forest Service, and Mrs. Agnes Chase, of the Smithsonian Institution, made a number of the drawings of plants. Joseph H. Stevenson and Wynne Johnson, of the Office of Information, drew the charts and maps.

Most of the photographs in color are by Herrin F. Culver and Hermann Postlethwaite, of Soil Conservation Service. Others are by Bob Branstead, John W. Busch, A. F. Hollowell, Richard Mawhinney, Anne Ware, Nicholas Webster, and Dale L. Swartz, of Soil Conservation Service; Wilfred J. Mead and Otis H. Greeson, of the Bureau of Plant Industry, Soils, and Agricultural Engineering; Leland J. Prater, of Forest Service, and Irene H. Stuckey, of the Rhode Island Agricultural Experiment Station. Many of the black-and-white photographs were taken by Wilfred J. Mead and Otis H. Greeson.

The photographs in color are modern counterparts of colored illustrations used in Yearbooks fifty years and more ago. They are used to show aspects of the subject that cannot be done in black-and-white pictures and to underscore again that our land and its beauty and capacity are something to be cherished and cared for.

We plan to devote the 1949 Yearbook of Agriculture to an allied and equally important subject—trees and forests.

On the Yearbook staff are Margaret V. Loyd, assistant to the editor, and Berenice A. Zander.

ALFRED STEFFERUD.