CLEAEING UP A PASTURE. 227 



then, and the pasture-lands have been improved in this way. 

 A great part of the pastures were covered with bushes, in 

 many places so high and thick that you could no't see a cow. 

 "How shall we remove these larger bushes?" was the first 

 question. Well, I contrived an instrument, something like a 

 stump-puller, put on one or two yoke of oxen, hitched into 

 the bushes, and pulled them up by the roots. Many of them 

 had got to be so large, that there was a large stump that we 

 could not cut except with an axe, and then it would start 

 again ; but if we could contrive any way to take it out by the 

 roots, there was an end of it the first time. I took those out 

 in that way all over the pastures of that farm, in the course 

 of two or three years. 



Then they vrere covered with another class of bushes. "VVe 

 had the hardback, but not the tall kind, of which the gentle- 

 man from Lenox has spoken ; they were the same kind that 

 grow around here. Those were all pulled up by hand. If 

 you take it in the spring of the year, after the frost comes 

 out and when the ground is soft, you can pull them right up. 

 That settled those. Then we had briers. I had no sheep, 

 except four cossets, and those I put among the cows, and 

 they ate some of them. But we had large quantities of brakes, 

 and sheep won't touch those to my knowledge. I have, how- 

 ever, three or four hundred boys, and about June, when the 

 brakes began to have heads on them, I set the boys into 

 them, and they pulled them all ofi'. That did not kill them. 

 They grew again in July or August, and I put the boys in and 

 they did the same thing again, and those brakes are disap- 

 pearing. The boys are going to conquer them. Then I have 

 ploughed something like forty acres, where I needed the 

 stone, and have cleared them of stone and eradicated the 

 bushes where I ploughed. Where it is so stony and so steep 

 that it won't do to plough, we mow them. We have to mow 

 them year after year ; but I believe with Prof. Stockbridge, 

 if you stick to them you conquer them. Why do I believe 

 so? Because I find that every successive crop comes up 

 smaller and smaller. I find, in looking over them the next 

 year, that there are many dead stems that have not started, 

 although many of them do start. Now, how do I remedy 

 that? When they come up and start I put my hoys in, and 



