122 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



and our arable lands. We have done it j)ersistently, almost 

 from the first settlement of the country, certainly until a 

 very recent period ; and here and there we do it even now. 

 It is a source of some satisfaction, I am sure, to such an 

 intelligent body of farmers as this, to feel that we have 

 now made a turn ; that, taking New England over, we are 

 improving gradually, and perhaps as rapidly as could be 

 expected in the other direction. Thoughtful, intelligent 

 farmers have now come to the conclusion that it is time to 

 give more study, more attention, and more care, to their grass- 

 lands, and a little less perhaps, comparatively, to their 

 cultivated lands. The old system of farming has now been 

 abandoned on the best-managed farms, and ought to have 

 been abandoned long ago. I remember perfectly well, — 

 don't you? — when the grass-crop was practically considered 

 a secondary crop, and the manure made from it went to the 

 ploughed lands. It was, in most cases, very poor manure at 

 that, — manure that was coarse, that was full of the butts of 

 cornstalks, that had lain leaching under the eaves of the 

 barn for months, until all the soluble materials had disap- 

 peared. There was no barn-cellar in my neighborhood when 

 I was a boy ; and, if there had been, the value of it would 

 not have been understood or appreciated. The common 

 practice was, as you know, to select some piece of run-out 

 grass-land, which the cows, perhaps, had gnawed bare, plough 

 it up, and put in potatoes, — a very exhausting crop, — with 

 the manure in the hill. The next year it was planted with 

 corn, with a lot of white beans or bush-beans in each hill ; 

 and almost invariably a pumpkin-seed or two was stuck in 

 witli them. The manure in the hill was sufficient to give 

 all those plants a brisk and rapid start at the outset; but 

 they had no sooner left the manure in the hill than they 

 were drawing upon the very heart and fertility of the soil 

 itself. The third year the farmer would generally sow oats, 

 and a little grass-seed with them. He would cut his oats 

 some time in midsummer, or a little later ; and, if the season 

 happened to be favorable, the grasses would make out to 

 sustain life ; but in a great many cases, as you remember 

 very well, we had severe droughts, that killed out all the 

 young plants after the oats were harvested. The next 

 year, if we happened to be reasonably fortunate, we had a 



