SECRETARY'S REPORT. 213 



to keep an animal on foot, to say nothing of fattening him. It is 

 a well known saying that, " Poor pastures make breachy cattle." 



Undoubtedly thousands of -acres in this State would be far 

 more profitably covered with pines than with cattle, and many 

 an observing farmer is now convinced of this fact ; but still we 

 must have pasture lands, and there are circumstances where it 

 becomes important to improve them and increase their produc- 

 tiveness. Some of them are so situated that they can be 

 ploughed and thus brought in, with other cultivated lands, to 

 the general rotation ; and where this can be done, it may be, on 

 the whole, the best and most economical mode of improving 

 them. 



A well known farmer of Worcester county says : " I have 

 renovated my old pasture land by pulling up the bushes by the 

 roots, scarifying the foul or mossy places with the harrow, and 

 sowing on grass seed and clover, both red and white." Another 

 says: " Plough, manure and re-seed. Some have sown rye with 

 the grass seed and then let the stock feed on the rye, as it will not 

 produce any seed-stalks — it sometimes lasts three years. This 

 method has been put in practice with marked success. On our 

 hills, ground plaster or gypsum has brought in the white clover 

 the next year after sowing." A practical farmer of Middlesex 

 says : " The best method I have found is to plough in forty 

 loads of good stable manure to the acre, plant, hoe, and kill the 

 bushes and moss, then seed down with redtop and white clover, 

 instead of taking a crop of rye without adding any thing to the 

 soil, then seeding down with ' barn chaff' as many do." An 

 experienced farmer of Hampden county says : " If the pasture 

 lands can be ploughed, do it in the month of June, say seven 

 inches deep, harrow thoroughly, sow one hundred pounds of 

 Peruvian guano and three pecks of buckwheat, per acre, harrow- 

 ing them in at the same time. Sow as much grass seed and of 

 the kind best adapted to the soil as you please, and bush it in. 

 I have tried twenty acres at a time with good success." 



Another says : " It can be done in various ways. I have a 

 piece of pasture land near my house that bore hardly a spear of 

 grass, and nothing else, except five finger and other weeds that 

 usually grow on old, worn out pine plains, and I commenced 

 twenty-four years ago by sowing Timothy and redtop and a 

 bushel and a half of plaster of Paris, per acre, once in two years 



