20 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



As nearly as can be estimated, the area in pasture is three 

 times that in mowing field. Short as is the grazing season, 

 the most of the growth of cattle and the most of the dairy 

 products come from the pastures. Many of the field grasses 

 are annuals and biennials ; but for pastures they must be 

 perennials, hardy and deep rooted, to bear the bite and tread 

 of cattle. 



Some one has said that a pasture is a place for cattle to 

 find food ; to find food — is this a slip of the tongue ? for in 

 many a pasture cattle need a detective to find it, especially 

 where the occupants are bushes, brakes, laurel, hard-hack, 

 sweet fern, and an army of acrid and bitter weeds, while the 

 scanty grasses are rough, sour and wiry. As every grass 

 has its periods of growth and maturity, and can only be kept 

 succulent and fresh for a short time, several kinds should be 

 sown together, all difiering somewhat in their period of ripen- 

 ing, and the pasture will be much more durable and uniform, 

 and in the later part of the season the feed will not all be 

 coarse and tasteless. There are very many valuable pasture 

 grasses, such for example as orchard grass, meadow foxtail, 

 sweet-scented vernal, alsike, white and yellow clover, red- 

 top, blue and June grass, rough-stalked meadow, tall meadow 

 and sheep's fescue. Orchard grass, on good land, has no 

 equal as a pasture grass ; it grows early and late and is the 

 quickest to spring up after close feeding. 



How many farmers ever seed their pastures, and thereby 

 greatly increase its yield ? or rather how many never seed, 

 but wait for the grass to come in, as it usually will do, but 

 seldom of the best varieties, until it must of too many a pas- 

 ture be said, that its herbage is little else than disagreeable 

 intruders and troublesome weeds? The vegetation which 

 prevails in the herbage of permanent pastures is known to 

 change as the soil becomes impoverished or improved. If 

 the fertility of the land be reduced either by over-stocking or 

 by the withholding of proper manure, the finer and more 

 valuable grasses become scarce, being over-grown by inferior 

 ones ; while in time even these deteriorate, and moss and 



