CLEARING UP BUSHY PASTURES. 213 



to make it pay its way, I would try to turn it to something to 

 make it pay its way. One recommendation is that sheep be 

 put upon your pastures. They are death to certain classes of 

 bushes. They will kill, there is no mistake about it, the 

 brambles and briers which infest our pastures. Now sheep, 

 either in consequence of dogs, or something else, have been 

 almost all driven out of the State. I believe we can do a 

 good thing for ourselves simply in the direction of raising 

 early lambs for market, while at the same time we put upon 

 our fields flocks of sheep which shall act as a scourge upon 

 bushes. Now Mr. Flint tells us that sheep put upon a past- 

 ure of the right kind, where the bushes are plenty, and over- 

 stocked (that may seem strange to you) for a year, will be 

 compelled to live upon this coarse herbage, and they will 

 gnaw it so close that they will kill it. You, in the discharge of 

 your duty to your flock, will feed them with cotton-seed meal 

 to keep up the nutrition which they will not get from the 

 bushes, and you improve your flock of sheep while improving 

 your pasture, and at the isame time you will get from the flock 

 enough to pay you for all the, money you have expended ; 

 your land will have a more valuable kind of grass, and the 

 value of the lot afterwards will be largely increased. 



That is one method. There is another : kill these l)ushes 

 out by mowing. Thgre is such a thing as " diligence and per- 

 severance overcoming all difliculties " ; and while it is rather a 

 disheartening operation to attempt to subdue our pastures by 

 mowing, I tell you it can be done ; that if a man persistently 

 sets to work to rid his pastures of these pests, he can accom- 

 plish it in one or two ways. In the first place, if the pasture 

 is all overrun with bushes ; if they are high and large, he can 

 give it up to forest and let the trees grow. Then he should 

 cut this growth of bushes all down thoroughly and completely, 

 and the best way of doing it that I ever saw was to take a yoke 

 of cattle, a good chain, a good axe, a stub-hoe, and put the 

 chain around a clump of the bushes and tear th^m out by the 

 roots; or else take^ scythe and cut them ofi*, and cut them 

 so persistently that they shall die. But having taken them 

 out and piled them up in heaps and burned them, don't stop 

 right there, for pity's sake. I have seen many pastures where 

 the owners stopped just at that point, and the result was that 



