108 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



SECOND DAY. 



Wednesday, Dec. 7, 1881. 



The meeting was called to order at ten o'clock by Mr. 

 Lane, who introduced as the chairman for the day Dr. 

 Horace P. Wakefield, who, on taking the chair, expressed 

 his thanks for the honor conferred upon Iiim, and further 

 said, — 



"Now I have the pleasure of announcing that we are 

 going to hear something from a gentleman who lives in that 

 region where ' the shot was fired ' that was ' heard round the 

 world.' He is going to tell us something which is worth 

 knowing, and which the whole world should know. I intro- 

 duce to you Mr. J. B. Moore of Concord, who will speak to 

 you on 'The Management of Cultivated Mowing-Lands:' 

 and if there is anybody, in my opinion, in the Commonwealth 

 of Massachusetts, who understands the subject, it is Capt. 

 Moore. He needs no introduction, because everybody who 

 has ever had any thing to do with agriculture knows him." 



THE MANAGEMENT OF CULTIVATED MOWING-LANDS. 



BY JOHN B. MOOKE. 



The subject assigned for me to speak on this morning — 

 " The Management of Cultivated Mowing-Lands " — I need 

 not say to you is a very important subject ; the most impor- 

 tant, in relation to the system of the agriculture of Massa- 

 chusetts, as judged from the census. In money value, the 

 hay-crop far exceeds any other crop grown in the State. The 

 value of the crop of English hay, according to the census 

 of 1875, was ^0,106,159, being more than one-fourth of the 

 entire agricultural products of the State. The crops of 

 barley, beets, buckwheat, carrots, Indian corn, clover-hay, 

 meadow-hay, millet, salt-hay, oats, onions, parsnips, potatoes, 

 rye, tobacco, and wheat, amount to 17,200,000, —$2,000,000 

 less than the value of the crop of English liay alone ; so that 

 you will see, although it was said yesterday in a paper that 

 corn was king, that corn has a low position in this State 

 when compared with English hay. The value of the corn- 

 crop of Massachusetts is a little more than $1,000,000. The 



