PASTURES AND PASTURING. 15& 



it is tailor than one can reach and produces seeds enough to 

 stock an acre. 



There are two plants that nothing will eat, that will allow 

 nothing else to grow to crowd them out, that never die, that 

 spread both by root and seed, that cannot be killed by 

 any ordinary means, and that have been widely disseminated 

 as garden flowers, — \iYe-forever (Sedum Telephium) and toad- 

 flax, snapdragon, butter-and-eggs {Linaria vulgaris). 

 Ploughing only multiplies and cultivates them, harrowing 

 enables them to colonize, and digging up and chopping to 

 pieces stem or root makes new plants ready to grow in any 

 opportunity. When dug up they can be destroyed by burn- 

 ing ; and the live-forever is the more easily got rid of, of the 

 two, for fragments of the root do not sprout as readily as 

 fragments of the stem. Covering the ground occupied by 

 the snapdragon with salt, to the destruction of all vegetation^ 

 is the only means I know of that has proved efiectual ; while 

 the live-forever may be extirpated by digging, picking and 

 burninof. 



Various species of asters and golden-rod make neglected ,^ 

 rough pastures glow in autumn with their varied colors of 

 purple and yellow. Close pasturing in the summer keeps 

 these down and runs them out. Not that I call such plants 

 good pasture ; yet they must be eaten, or they will take up 

 the whole surface in congenial soils. Gnaphalium^ in its 

 various species, from the mouse-ear of spring to the life-ever- 

 lasting of autumn, as for as I have observed, is never eaten 

 by animals, and is only tolerated because we know of no 

 available means of getting rid of it. The mouse-ear indi- 

 cates poverty of the soil and is driven away by enrichment, 

 and doubtless the same would be efiectual with the other 

 species. 



Brush or Bushes 



represent a numerous host of intruders. The alder, willow, 

 witch-hazel, thornbush, sumach and choke-cherry, only grow 

 large enough for wood, yet destroy a pasture as efiectual ly 

 as good timber. Pex'sistcnt cutting will destroy them, and 

 as my success has not depended upon any purticulai* season 

 for the operation, I have none to recommend. 



