156 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



Smaller bushes, as sweet-fern, elder, bay berry, blackberry 

 and raspberry, hardback ( Spirea and Potentilla), are great nui- 

 sances. Plouiihino^, where the nature of the land will admit, 

 seems the best remedy. Cutting, followed by close pasturing, 

 is sometimes successful with one or another of them ; but the 

 victories of the enemy have been so much more numerous than 

 our successes, that on the whole we must own beat, up to 

 the present date. The enemy have possession of the field. 



A word about the hardback {Potentilla fnUicosa). This 

 is a native shrub, too well known in Berkshire and Litch- 

 field counties to need any description ; yet, happily, almost 

 unknown elsewhere. A bush scarcely noticed fifty years 

 ago, it has now come to be the worst pest we have in our 

 pastures. Thousands of acres of rich, moist, black land 

 are rendered valueless by it. Mowing checks it ; plough- 

 ing eradicates it; but it may come again. It delights in 

 rough and wet places, — neither fit for the scythe nor the 

 plough. It blossoms and perfects its seed when only a 

 few inches high ; but with age it becomes a large bush, six 

 feet in height. It spreads alone from the seeds, which are 

 numerous and perfected during the whole season. The blos- 

 soms are yellow, like a buttercup. The whole plant has a 

 weak, sickly look, like the sage-brush of the plains ; yet it 

 never dies. It is easily pulled up, and every neighborhood 

 where it is unknown should take warning and watch for the 

 advance guard. 



An old farmer said, "if he was to live his farm life over 

 again, he would fight hardbacks "with bran ; ^ that is, by close 

 feeding and fertilizing his pastures, he would keep it out. As 

 a partial food it is eaten by cattle and sheep, but is refused as 

 a sole diet. I have a field of four acres that was becoming 

 covered with the hardback. Fifteen years ago I changed it 

 to a night pasture for my dairy. The close feeding and in- 

 €reased fertilization have nearly eradicated it, while a patch 

 of sweet flag flourishes with unabated vigor. 



To derive the full benefit from the close pasturing which I 

 recommend, it should be accompanied with the feeding of 

 bran, linseed or cotton-seed meal, or other grain. "When 

 horses were shipped from Connecticut to the West Indies, 

 the droves would be kent at pasturage near the place of ship- 



