294 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



may talk as much as you please about fertilizing by plowing-, but 

 if you only plow you certainly exhaust the land. You may plow 

 ever so deep, there is a time coming when the soil will become 

 exhausted unless you put something to it. It seems to me there 

 is danger of pressing this point too far. You may plow a farm 

 until you run it completely out. If you go to buy a farm, the first 

 question you ask is, " How much has this been plowed ? Has it 

 been run over, and cropped, and cropped, and cropped ? If so, I 

 don't want it." Then there is another thing. I have been taught 

 by experience and observation that, as a general thing, it is poor 

 policy to plow pastures ; but I have "seen them plowed in these 

 regions. The first condition of a pasture, just as it comes from 

 the burning of the trees upon it, is the best condition ; and 

 every time you plow it afterwards you injure the pasture. It 

 is a mistake, emphatically so, unless you manure it, and, as a 

 general thing, people do not manure their pastures when they 

 plow them. They have run out ; they have got into moss ; they 

 have run up to bushes, and they plow for the purpose of seeding 

 them, getting them into clover, as they say. I believe it is not a 

 good plan to plow a pasture, but lay out the same money 3'ou ex- 

 pend in plowing and seeding the pasture in applying bone dust, 

 superphosphate, ashes, plaster, salt, or almost any fertilizer, and 

 you will have a superior pasture — a pasture which will last longer, 

 will give better feed, and give better results than by plowing. 



I think we plow all our fields too much — our common mowings 

 and common tillage. It seems to me that it is the most exhaus- 

 tive kind of farming to plow. In the region where I have lived 

 for some years past, the farmers have adopted almost as a maxim, 

 "the less you can plow tlic better," and as long as it is 

 possible for them to keep their land in good grass without plow- 

 ing, they do so, by top-dressing, by re-seeding, by harrowing, by 

 applying plaster, ashes, salt, or any fertilizer that will keep the 

 land in grass. They will do almost anything rather than plow. 

 You cannot determine of course by that what should be done 

 here — the soil is different ; but it seems to me by top-dressing — 

 beginning ea/'Z^ enoi/^/i after it is seeded down, and continuing to 

 top-dress, you can greatly delay the necessity for breaking up the 

 soil ; and the longer you can do that, the more profit you will 

 get, because it costs so much to seed land and to work land. I 

 believe if this point were duly considered we should gain by it ; 



