216 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



ence in the manure. " Horse-manure " is as indefinite as 

 any thing can be. If you can get manure out of grain-fed 

 liorses anywhere in the State of Massachusetts, that is well 

 cared for, and has not a superabundance of straw, at six 

 dollars a cord, I advise you to spend all the money you have 

 got in manure. In my region I cannot buy horse-manure 

 at any such price ; and, if I could, I don't know that I should. 

 But still, I never knew a man to fail of getting a crop under 

 reasonable circumstances, who put on a good charge of good 

 horse-manure. I believe that we may say that that never 

 fails, except when every thing fails. That is one of the 

 conditions that will overcome a great many of the other 

 failures in the conditions. But the question is, I suppose, 

 Can we afford to buy any thing outside of that ? Are there 

 any commercial fertilizers that we can afford to use when 

 we can get horse-manure at six dollars a cord? That de- 

 pends upon what crops you want to grow, and upon the value 

 of the crops. This, again, opens a vast field ; and it would 

 take a great deal of time to answer the question. I am not 

 a farmer: I am a fruit-grower. I grow grass incidentally, 

 but I do not grow any crops ; and, looking at it from my 

 point of view, I do not see it in my way to buy horse- 

 manure : on the contrary, I sell hay. I sell hay at the ex- 

 pense of my farm, believing that I can restore, in the shape 

 of commercial fertilizers, what I sell in the shape of hay. 

 This is a question that has worried me a great deal in the last 

 ten years, — " How can I keep my grass-land up to the best 

 advantage ? " I used to do it by keeping stock in the win- 

 ter. I have never pastured stock in the summer : I do not 

 believe I can afford to own a pasture. I did own a pasture 

 once, and now it is worth a number of thousand dollars an 

 acre. It is impossible for me to own a pasture. If it is 

 good for any thing, I make it a good deal better ; and, if it 

 is poor, I make it a good deal better by growing it up to 

 wood. But, after trying various . experiments in keeping 

 stock, I found that gradually I made less and less, and 

 therefore concluded I must do something else. Then the 

 question was. Can I keep my farm up if I sell my hay ? 

 That experiment I have been trying for a year or two, only 

 I have not gone far enough to make it certain. I now sell 

 all the hay that I do not necessarily use for the little stock 



