300 STATE BOAED OF AGRICULTURE. 



Good farmers ■would be ashamed of the small average of the hay per acre. 

 Grass is king among the crops of the United State*. 



PRIZES TO IJE OFFERED. 



If our agricultural societies would offer special prizes for the best pastures 

 and meadows, it might awaken more interest in this subject. A special com- 

 mittee should visit the places in the proper season, and might make a valuable 

 report each year in a manner some like the orchard committee of the State 

 Horticultural Society. 



WHAT STOCK SHALL WE KEEP? LECTURE DELIVERED AT FARM- 

 ER'S INSTITUTES IX ARMADA, ROCHESTER, ADRIAN, COLDWATER, 

 AND YPSIT-ANTI. IX JANUARY AND FEBRUARY, 1876. 



BY C. L. IXGERSOLL. 



Mr. President. Ladies and Gentlemen, — It seems to me that this question is 

 one of vital importance, — vastly more so than many of you perhaps think. It 

 jjerhaps may not have entered yotir minds that the stock interest of the United 

 States is larger than any other single item with which farmers have to deal. 



Not only this but larger than many others combined. In Appleton's Encyclo- 

 pedia we lind an estimate for 1873 of the stock interest for that year, compared 

 with the ten principal crops raised ; including wheat, corn, rye, barley, oats, buck- 

 wheat, flax, etc., and then wo find the stock interest exceeding the united sums of 

 these by over $20,000,000. The figures are these : stock owned $1,684,431,092 

 worth; ten principal crops raised in 1873, valued at $1,661,505,043. This 

 serves to give you some idea of the stock interest in our country, and indeed it 

 is not surprising when we think that every farmer has some stock ; but uo sin- 

 gle farmer raises more than five or six out of the ten principal crops, and a 

 large majority not more tlian three or four of them. 



This question is also intimately connected with the manure question, — 

 a question which too many Michigan farmers have not looked squarely in the 

 face, and one that they must soon pay more attention to. The deleterious sys- 

 tem of cropping their farms practiced by a large majority of our farmers, and 

 then selling all or nearly all of the products without returning manures to their 

 farms, cannot but tell in time on their prosperity and the value of their farms. 

 They are ])erhaps making money, but their farms are more than that amount 

 •of money impoverished. 



The fact that the yield of wheat, corn, oats and other grain crops is gradually 

 falling lower and lower calls loudly on Michigan farmers to investigate this evil 

 and remedy it. Not that we are worse than our sister States, but we should all 

 wake up and see if something cannot be done. In the twelve States where most 

 Avheat is raised, the average in the last ten or fifteen years has fallen from three 

 to five bushels per acre, and this in the face of the fact that much new land is 

 opened up each year and sown to wheat on which large crops are raised. 



Of these States I will mention Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Iowa, and Cali- 

 fornia, which are eminently wheat-growing States. To show you the necessity 



