82 BOARD OF AGEICULTURE. 



cultivation and with from twenty-five to fifty dollars' worth 

 of manure and special fertilizers to the acre. If every farm 

 had raised only fifty bushels to the acre, considerably less 

 than the lowest of these trial crops, we should have had 

 about a million and a half dollars added to the value of the 

 corn crop for that year. If a farmer will plough up a piece 

 of good but run-out grass land, put on twenty-five loads 

 of manure, and say eight dollars' worth of some superphos- 

 phate to start the crop, till the ground thoroughly by often 

 running the cultivator through it, and dispense with the 

 labor of hand hoeing, he can, as others have done, harvest 

 seventy-five bushels of corn to the acre, more than twice 

 what he would get by scattering his manure over two acres, 

 and half cultivating it with double the labor ; he would get 

 more than twice the average of the corn per acre as grown 

 in the State, and at a cost of about thirty cents per bushel. 

 Half a dozen farmers proved this in the Franklin County 

 report for 1880. 



If it were worth the time, an examination of every crop 

 grown would show beyond a doubt that throughout the State 

 we pretend to cultivate about twice the land we should to 

 obtain the crops we do. 



Pastures. — A great loss to farmers and a consequent 

 hindrance to successful farming, is to be found in the neglect 

 or unwise treatment of pasture lands. Of these there are 

 in the Commonwealth 1,425,125 acres, valued at $17.41 per 

 acre, amounting to $32,141,620, the interest on which at 

 five per cent, is $1,507,081. A fair calculation of the stock 

 as given by the census, pastured at present prices, would 

 show just about that amount. 



There are thousands of acres pastured that should be 

 allowed to grow up to wood, to supply at some time the 

 never ceasing draft made by our farmers on their woodlands, 

 and thousands now mown that should be turned into pasture, 

 the best evidence of which is the fact previously stated, that 

 many towns yield less than the average of a ton of hay to 

 the acre. 



The best farmers say that it is not profitable to mow lands 

 that yield less than a ton to the acre ; when it falls bqlow 

 that, the land should be re-seeded, tilled or turned into pas- 



