SECRETAEY'S REPORT. 69 



following statement of the condition of tilings in parts of Es- 

 sex County will apply equally well to some other sections of 

 the State: — "Pasture lands for the last twenty years have 

 been on the decrease. Except where they are ploughed and 

 manured they become mossy, run over to bushes, and are 



rapidly getting into wood." 



The number of acres in pasturage in 1840 was about 1,210,- 



154. In 1850 it had increased somewhat, and the returns gave 

 1,311,210 acres, capable of keeping 273,301 cows, with the help 

 of tlie fall feed they could get on the other lands. This calcu- 

 lation allows about 4| acres to each cow. 



It is a fact too well known, and too generally admitted to be 

 doubted, that many of our pasture lands are fast running out. 

 They were long since exhausted by constant cropping ; some of 

 them for more than a century. Many thousand acres have 

 furnished all the milk, butter, and cheese sold from the farm? 

 without receiving so much as a pennyworth in return. In some 

 sections of the State, however, the matter is now beginning to 

 excite the serious consideration of farmers, and they are doing 

 something to provide summer feed for their stock. 



So far as can be ascertained, complaints of this diihculty are 

 more frequent in the eastern part of the State than in the in- 

 terior and western part, where much of the pasture land has been 

 used less than a century, and some less than a half century ; and 

 where the greater attention paid to sheep husbandry has pre- 

 served them. In many fields and pastures of eastern Massachu- 

 setts the white-weed, or ox-eye daisy, has taken such exclusive 

 possession that it can scarcely be eradicated. It has been found 

 that this troublesome plant will not grow where sheep are 

 pastured, however firm a foothold it may have gained before 

 they are put on the land. If this be so, it would be judicious 

 in many cases for farmers to engage in the raising of sheep, 

 temporarily, at least. 



In some parts of Essex Cqujity a plant is to be found com- 

 monly called wood-waxen — ( Genista tinctoria) — introduced 

 originally by Governor Endicott as a garden flower. It has 

 spread over and taken exclusive possession of many hundred 

 acres, and is more difficult to extirpate, and more troublesome 

 than the white-weed even. Sheep eat this with great avidity. 



