204 BOARD OF AGRICULTUEE. 



than go to destruction. We 7nust do it, and I believe that we 

 have got Yankee wit enough to contrive a way of doing a 

 thing that we find must be done. I say that this Board ot 

 Agriculture has declared that about one-half of this laud which 

 remains, after the other portion has been allowed to go back 

 to forests, should be reclaimed by top-dressing ; the other 

 half, we are of opinion, should be renovated by cultivation 

 and by applications made in the form of manure. Where we 

 can run the plough, the fields should be taken up, should be 

 thoroughly tilled, fertilized, cultivated and receive all the 

 benefits of fertilization and tillaije, and then re-seeded. This 

 I believe to be the opinion of the Board of Agriculture in . 

 relation to the management of our pastures. 



Now, gentlemen, I have but little of my own to say. In 

 the first place, I most heartily, in my own individual view, 

 coincide with these views of the Board. I believe them to be 

 the gospel in relation to the grass-crop, the haj^-crop and the 

 management of these pastures and mowing-lands. The whole 

 field has been surveyed, and while I give my full assent to 

 the views of the Board thus far, I have a few additional sug- 

 gestions to make. 



In the first place, in relation to the value of the grass and 

 hay-crop. We take our estimates from the statistics of the 

 governments of the States and of the United States. When 

 they gather these statistics, they say, for instance, that the 

 hay-crop alone is worth somewhere about four hundred millions 

 lOf dollars. 



Now remember that this is a commercial valuation ; but you 

 know full well that the hay-crop of the United States is not a 

 commercial product. Although we sell more or less hay, yet 

 by far the larger portion of the crop of the whole country is 

 consumed at home, on the farms where it is produced, and 

 the money value of the hay received by the farmer is received 

 by him from stock and stock products. The formers of this 

 country never received anything like four hundred millions, or 

 three hundred and fifty millions of dollars from the hay-crop, 

 in money. They received it in a different form. But I want 

 to call the attention of the farmers of Barre and of Worcester 

 County to the hay-crop, considered merely as a money crop. 

 We have in Massachusetts to-day about one hundred thousand 



