PASTURE TEACHINGS. 199 



and tliroiighoiit the countiy, that is the best way to manage 

 mowin2:-hmds. 



The management of our pasture-fields seems to correspond 

 with the treatment of our mowing-lands. I judge that the 

 best sort of pasture here in New England is that which pro- 

 duces the most brush, the most brakes, the most brambles, 

 and the most briers. That is the kind of pasture-land which 

 the prevailing practice of our people shows is the best. I find 

 very little eifort being made anywhere to improve the quality 

 of the grass in our pastures. If they produce sedges, rushes 

 and coarse herbage, that is all well ; it is no advantage what- 

 ever to improve the quality of the grass by introducing those 

 sweet, nutritious grasses which some men imagine are the 

 only plants that will produce good milk or good butter. 

 And there should be no effort made to put upon the pastures 

 anything which the pasturing has taken off; simply leave them 

 to nature, and then turn on all the stock vou can «:et, over- 

 stock, stock down to the starvation point, and let your cattle 

 run there just as late in the season as they can live. This, 

 judging from the prevailing practice, is the best way to treat 

 your pasture-lands. 



Now, in contradistinction to this, I have looked the record 

 through to see what the Massachusetts Board of Apiculture 

 have said upon these different topics. I have looked Mr. 

 Flint's " Grasses " through to see what he had to say on the 

 subject, and to see if this is what we have been telling the 

 farmers of Massachusetts for the last twenty-five years ; and I 

 find that we have said to each other and to the world, that the 

 hay-crop is the most valuable of any single crop cultivated in the 

 United States ; that the hay and grass crop coml)incd is worth, 

 in the a2:2:regate, in the United States, somewhere l)etween five 

 and six hundred millions of dollars. This is its money value. 

 And, more than all that, we have said to the farmers of the 

 country, that its value in dollars and cents is as nothing com- 

 pared with its indirect value in the influence it has in preserv- 

 ing the fertility of our farms, as being the great source of 

 manurial supply. We have said that no farm can be kept up 

 to a high state of fertility ; no farm can do otherwise than 

 depreciate, if in its ordinary management we sell the hay pro- 

 duced upon it ; and that no man can thrive on a farm, no man 



