114 STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



few iuclies in thickness, allowing each layer to harden under the traffic before 

 the next is apiDlied. The thickness of the broken f^tone ehonld vary with the 

 amount of traffic from 8 to 16 inches. Once made, the broken stone road is the 

 cheapest of all roads. It is a road over which a single horse can easily draw 

 nearly two tons against eight-ninths of one ton on a gravel road. 



Travellers in England have often wondered at the huge load the English 

 horse draws, and have frequently thought that it was due to his superiority to our 

 horse ; but that is not the case, for when put on our roads he is no better than 

 our horses. The true solution is found in the fact that the Englishmen have 

 invested in permanent roads what the Americans have put in perishable horses. 

 Consequently we find the Englishman doing the same amount of work that we 

 do, with one-third the number of horses ; and he says he has made a paying in- 

 vestment, though he has expended an immense amount in his roads. 



Every fact indicates that good roads pay in money and in comfort, and the 

 time has now arrived when the consideration should be given them that their 

 importance demands. 



Next in order was Hon. Richard Ferris of Cheshire, who read the following 

 essay on 



cuttixCt and curixg hay. 



Having never made chemistry a study, I am somewhat timid in entering upon 

 the subject of the proper time to cut and the best mode to cure hay ; and I 

 frankly confers that I could not have been induced to enter upon a discusion of 

 the subject were it not that doctors supposed to be sound in faith and practice 

 so materially differ in their views regarding this matter. A writer in the agri- 

 cultural department of the patent-office report for 1858 (p. 308) says: *' In 

 the timothy grass, for instance, the culms are found to contain more nutritive 

 matter when the seed is ripe than those of any other species of grass that has 

 been submitted to experiment. The value of the culms simply exceeds tliat of 

 the grass when in flower, in the proportion of 14 to 5. Notwithstanding this, 

 it has been contended that, although there is more nutriment contained in the 

 seed crop of this grass than in the flowering crop, the loss of the after-math, or 

 second crop, which would have been produced during the time the seed was 

 ripening, would more than outweigh the superior quality of nutritive matter 

 contained in the seed crop. But for reasons given * * * the cutting of 

 timothy before the process of desiccation has commenced on its stalks, would 

 prove fatal to a future crop from the same roots.'' Acting, as I supposed, on 

 the best of authority, considering the high source through which it came, the 

 next year I let my timothy stand "till the process of desiccation had com- 

 menced on its stalks ;'' but I never repeated the exijeriment. My hay was not 

 worth half price. The cattle didn't like it, and a large percentage of it passed 

 under them as bedding. The fact is simply this : the succulent and nutritive 

 properties of the grass had nearly all gone to mature the seeds, and to that 

 extent were lost as food, as stock never digest the seed. 



With regard to the other theory of this learned doctor, that ''the cutting of 

 timothy before the process of dessication has commenced on its stalks would 

 prove fatal to a future crop from the same roots," I will only say that, for the 

 last nineteen years, I have cut, on my farm on which I now live, more or less 

 hay every year ; and v/ith the exception of the year above mentioned I have cut 

 my timothy while in the blow, never allowing it to mature sufficiently for any 

 portion of the seed to shell when the hay was cured. I never cut to exceed three 



