130 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



me, but I have had more sympathy expressed for me, in con- 

 nection with this matter, than I ever had for any misfortune in 

 my life, whether that misfortune was being stripped by a State 

 Convention or anything else. I have never had gentlemen 

 approach me in such a sympathetic way, as much as to say, 

 " What a dreadful thing it is to have got into this position." 

 Now, my friends, I have not got into the position that these 

 gentlemen seem to suppose. I agree, I always have agreed 

 precisely with what Dr. Nichols said this morning. When I 

 stated to the farmers of Massachusetts that fodder corn was 

 not a proper food to give to milch cows, I was dealing with what 

 every farmer was feeding to his cows under the name of fodder 

 corn. Now, friends, I used to raise fodder corn myself. Before 

 I got too lazy to do it, I used to take a plough in the morning, 

 furrow out my ground, take a small horse-cart and some ma- 

 nure, drop it into those furrows, and then I did just as the old, 

 substantial, experienced farmers told me to do ; I filled that 

 drill full of corn. They told me that was raising fodder corn. 

 Isn't that the way it is generally done ? It used to be generally 

 done so, and I believe it is generally done so to this day. That 

 is the way fodder corn was and is raised. Now, what was my 

 crop ? It was just exactly the crop that every man gets who 

 seeds for fodder corn in that way ; and that was, along from 

 the middle to the last of August a growth of vegetable matter 

 from four to six feet high, without a shadow of a shade of 

 maturity to it, as green as rowen, and that is green enough ; 

 as green as rowen, and as immature as a ten-year old boy ; 

 utterly without any indication of having arrived at a condition 

 in which it would be nutritious to cattle. There it stood, with 

 great leaves, great stalks, looking like I don't know what ram- 

 pant growth. What did I do with it ? Why, from the middle 

 to the last of August, the hay-cart was sent out and it was cut 

 down with a sickle or a scythe, piled into this cart, and brought 

 up to the barn, put before the cows, and they ate it. I am tell- 

 ing you just exactly the way in which this fodder corn was 

 raised and used when I came out and said it did not do any 

 good. The cows got at it, and thrashed it this way and that, 

 until they got thoroughly worn out. They would eat a good 

 deal the first day, not so much the second day, and by the fifth 

 or sixth day, they manifested that they had had about enough 



