158 BOAKD OF AGRICULTURE. 



yard manure or tobacco stalks. Even brush has been used 

 to advantage in certain dry, clean pastures. Make the best 

 use of materials at hand and we believe that our pastures 

 may be maintained in a degree of productiveness equal to 

 that of their virgin state when first cleared from the forest. 



We have had these points in view continually during our 

 long ramble through these dry fields, and if any of you see 

 a chance to do something in this work our object is accom- 

 plished. It is not the work of a day, but rather of a lifetime, 

 for which our subject calls. The means suggested seem 

 trifling and feeble in comparison with the object, yet each 

 in its place has been successful, and rightly applied they will 

 meet every exigency. 



The Chairman. There is still time before the adjourn- 

 ment for any questions that you may be disposed to ask, and 

 Mr. Gold will be very glad and certainly able to answer any 

 pertinent questions. 



Mr. Sedgwick. The speaker stated in his remarks that 

 hardback pulls easily. I would like to have him tell us 

 what he calls easy. 



Mr. Gold. A man can pull a hardback bush that is as 

 big as a common currant bush, unless it is pinched in between 

 two rocks or something of that kind. Ordinarily it can be 

 pulled, and there are farms within my knowledge where a 

 regular system of pulling has kept the land entirely clear 

 when the whole of the surrounding territory had been 

 given up to it. The white bush spreads from the root 

 and becomes a tangled mass that the plough can hardly get 

 through, and it cannot be pulled. You cannot pull a single 

 specimen as big as a pipe stem. 



Hardback grows from a common neck at the ground. It 

 maintains a large number of stalks, but the roots do not 

 spread and spring up again, and hence the entire plant has a 

 collar or neck from which it grows. The earth may wash in 

 and these difierent branches may root in that way, but other- 

 wise you will find a space at the bottom where there is but a 

 single stem between the root and the plant part ; and although 

 it jmay spread and be from four to six feet across, and several 

 feet high, it all has one common neck. Hence it can be 



