74 



BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



we are obliged to resort to special fertilizers. Plaster on 

 some soils, not on all, proves an excellent fertilizer. It 

 ought to be thoroughly tried on different soils, and when 

 found to act beneficially it is a cheap and available fertilizer. 

 Pasture lands in Worcester county, Mass., are kept perma- 

 nently productive by an annual application of one or two 

 hundred pounds of plaster, spread on just as the grass is 

 starting into growth in the spring. Potash is one of the most 

 essential elements of plant food, and is one of which the soil 

 is likely to become soonest exhausted. Wood ashes is the 

 most available source of supplying potash to the soil. The 

 farmers of Maine are culpably negligent of their best inter- 

 ests, in allowing ship loads of this most precious fei'tilizer 

 carried away from their farms to enrich the soils of Long 

 Island and New Jersey. 



In Piscataquis county, and the same is true probably in all 

 the older sections of the State, milch cows and growing ani- 

 mals need a more liberal supply of phosphate of lime for the 

 formation of bone and the production of milk. This need of 

 bone material is indicated by a desire to chew bones, leather, 

 rotten wood, and the like. The lack of phosphate of lime is 

 generally greatest on lands long used as pasturage for dairy 

 cows, caused not only by the large supply demanded for the 

 growth of bone, but from having been drawn out of the soil 

 in the milk, of which it forms quite a large per cent, of its 

 solid matter. 



Other means for the permanent improvement of pas'^ures, 

 to which attention might profitably be given, are draining 

 wet lands, removing stone that encumbers the surface of the 

 soil, sowing a variety of grass seeds upon bare knolls, keep- 

 ing the stock constantly upon the pasture during the grazing 

 season, and knocking to pieces and spreading the droppings 

 of the stock while at pasture. All these, and such other 

 means as are at his command, will not be neglected by the 

 diligent farmer, but will be taken advantage of for the pur- 

 pose of constantly increasing the productiveness of his pas- 

 tures, thereby adding to his profits in the increased yield of 



