218 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



quiet, and see a system of husdandry continued, so blighting to the 

 general prosperity ? 



.By the last census, we find that the whole number of our domes- 

 tic animals of all ages, reducing the number of sheep by a fair stan- 

 dard of comparison, to neat stock and horses, is to the improved 

 land in the State, as one animal to jour and three-fourths acres. 



No wonder it is hard to devise ways and means to discharge pub- 

 lic and private indebtedness. No wonder that our taxes are felt to 

 be onerous. No wonder we have no agricultural schools. No won- 

 der at all that farms are cheap in Maine ! Besides the direct ex- 

 pense of erecting and supporting interior fences, they offend by har- 

 boring all sorts of vermin. They protect a rare assemblage of brush 

 and noxious weeds, or cost the farmer much labor to have it other- 

 wise. They occupy, with the necessary head-lands left in plowing, 

 much space on the farm, and it is all worse than lost. 



Then the loss, in time, in the extra turnings of the team in small 

 enclosures, in using the plow, the harrow, cultivator, roller, mow- 

 ing-machine, and horse-rake, is no inconsiderable item in the sea- 

 son's operations. I really believe that the plowing done in this 

 State, -with our heavy teams and prodigious plows, will show an 

 average length of furrows not exceeding twenty-five rods. In this 

 country of deep snows, our fences often cause immense drifts, which 

 remain late in the spring, keeping the ground wet, and greatly re- 

 tarding our operations. But we will hasten to leave so unpleasant 

 a theme, for proposition 



3d. The economy of food. This implies but little more than 

 the first. The differences in areas required by the two systems, 

 arise in part from superior culture in the one case, and in the other, 

 from the fact that much food is destroyed by being trampled 

 under foot, by being dunged upon by the cattle lying upon it and 

 breathing upon it so as to cause it to be rejected. Another reason 

 for these great differences, is, that the conditions of growth, with all 

 the grasses, do not fully exist on soils continuously compressed by 

 the tread of animals. Who has not observed the vast difference in 

 the thickness of sod between lands long depastured, and those mown ? 



Grasses, as well as other crops of the fiirm, have their growth in 

 an accelerating ratio. As the size of the plant increases, presenting 

 itself more to atmospheric influence, the faster it draws from that 



