GRASS AND HAY CROP. 121 



I think that answers the question sufficiently. At one 

 o'clock the Board adjourned to two, p.m. 



Afteenoon Session. 



The meeting was called to order at two o'clock ; and the 

 secretary of the Board was introduced, who spoke as follows, 

 on 



THE GRASS AJ^) HAY CROP. 

 BT CHAKLES L. FLINT. 



Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen, — In my Fourth Annual 

 Report to the Legislature, in 1856, now more than twenty 

 years ago, I devoted over two hundred and thirty pages to a 

 consideration of the grass and hay crop, discussing it in all 

 its bearings. I do not propose, of course, to travel over the 

 same ground now. The most I can expect to do is to glance 

 at a few of the more striking points in which we have made 

 decided progress since then, and to point out, in a somewhat 

 desultory way, how we may increase the quantity, and im- 

 prove the quality, of our grass and hay crop. 



I need not, I am sure, stop to enlarge upon the importance 

 of the subject. I need not remind you that the grass-crop 

 lies at the very foundation of all our prosperity and success 

 as farmers in this northern latitude. I need not say that a 

 greater extent of land is devoted to it, that a greater value 

 is realized from it, than from any one crop, not excepting 

 cotton : I might almost say, than from all other crops put 

 together. You kno\v? that, before the late Rebellion, our 

 Southern brethren were accustomed to boast that cotton was 

 king ; but I claim, that, if any precedence is due to any one 

 cultivated crop over another, that claim, of right, belongs 

 rather to the grass and hay crop. I will not attempt to 

 prove that no successful, profitable, and progressive system 

 of farming can be carried on without the use of manure, no 

 matter what the climate may be, and that we depend, to a 

 very large extent, upon the grass and hay crop for that great 

 basis of all successful cultivation of the soil. 



The great besetting sin of New-England farming has been, 

 that we have robbed our grass-land to feed our hoed crops 



16 



