SECRETARY'S REPORT. 149 



Top dressing may be resorted to upon pasture lands, with equal 

 benefit as upon meadow lands, and the same rules apply in regard 

 to the fertilizers to be spread — gypsum, marl, ashes, leached or 

 unleached, bone dust, pond, river, peat, salt marsh, or dock mud, 

 marine manures generally, where these may be obtained, and even 

 road scrapings, may all be used to very decided advantage, and often 

 produce an improvement even more immediate, marked and durable 

 than stable manure. Upon lands long cropped by milch cows and 

 young stock, and which have thus yielded a large proportion of their 

 phosphates to the milk, and bone carried from them, probably no 

 application is equal to crushed bones, and it is sometimes necessary 

 to resort to this dressing upon old pastures, not merely to produce 

 increased fertility, but to obviate the effects of what is called bone 

 disease in cows, and which is caused by a deficient supply of phos- 

 phates in their food. Whenever a cow is found eagerly nibbling or 

 chewing a stray bone, as is not unfrequently the case, we may be 

 sure she is suffering from a deficiency of the bone producing mate- 

 rial in the food, and the remedy is obvious. If crushed bone cannot 

 be obtained, leached ashes will serve this purpose, as they usually 

 contain enough phosphate of lime alone to repay the cost. Liebig 

 states that leached ashes from the wood of the common beech tree, 

 yield about five times as much phosphate as is contained in rich 

 animal manure. 



Another point with regard to pastures should not be forgotten. 

 It is impossible to secure a good growth of valuable nutritious 

 grasses upon land which is encumbered with stagnant water either 

 upon or near the surface. Under-draining is as useful upon pasture 

 ground as upon meadow land, and if carried out would contribute 

 greatly to the health of cattle, and particularly so in the case of 

 sheep. Open drains, however, if suitably cared for and kept open, 

 serve a valuable purpose ; but unless drainage in some form be 

 secured, wet, marshy, swampy lands, however well prepared in 

 other respects, will soon become occupied with rushes, flags or water 

 grasses, to the exclusion of nutritious feed, and to the detriment of 

 the stock feeding upon them, besides being badly poached up by the 

 tread of the cattle. Division of pastures, so that the stock may be 

 removed from one portion to another, is in many instances, attended 

 with advantages outweighing the drawback of increased cost for 



