FIFTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK — PART VI. 485 



take. Milk, meat, wool, pork — the materials for frame building and repair 

 of waste tissues — all of these things are derived from the grass. The field 

 gives of its store abundantly at first, but as the treasury is drawn upon year 

 after year, the supplies lessen and bankruptcy ensues. The soil of such 

 fields is no longer able to raise a normal crop of grass— that is shown by the 

 rank growth on the manured spots — and it may be taken for granted that 

 the grass grown can no longer fully nourish the animals eating it. Fewer 

 animals have to be turned on the pasture, but they merely retard final bank- 

 ruptcy. What is needed is a rest for the field and a few square meals for 

 the hungry land. We should not expect to go on year after year borrowing 

 from the soil and returning nothing. We are doing this every year on most 

 farms. It is time to wake up to sensible methods of management, and the 

 pasture lands need them most. It is necessary to understand that an acre of 

 good grass will fully maintain only a certain, fixed number of each variety 

 of animal; that turning more than this number upon a pasture will surely 

 weaken it, and that for what is removed something must be returned, else 

 poverty will surely follow. Grass can not be barebitten with impunity. Grass 

 roots need protection; grass hearts must be conserved; a winter mulch of 

 grass is necessary, for snow does not always make up for man's delinquen- 

 cies. Then, too, the pasture tends to become hide-bound like an unhealthy 

 horse. This tells of lack of air in the soil, of lack of circulation, of insuf- 

 ficient drainage and of sourness. The air must be made to circulate freely. 

 That is done by allowing water to enter and percolate. It means an ade- 

 quate system of under-drainage and in many instances a top-dressing of 

 lime. All things considered, the pasture area deserves and requires as much 

 attention and study as any area on the farm and generally receives far less. 

 When all of the grass is of like growth and color, when manure droppings 

 make no appreciable diflference in growth, then the soil of the pasture is in 

 good heart and animals will thrive upon its grass. In short, the pasture 

 area should be enriched and attended to as carefully as any other part of the 

 farm, and the prevailing abuses to which it is exposed should be 

 discontinued. 



HOW TO RID LAND OF COCKLEBURS. 



Wallaces' Farmer. 



The ownership of land in the west is gradually changing from the bad 

 farmers to the better class. Bad farming as in the case of farms that have 

 been rented for a number of years to a poor class of renters, means land 

 impoverished, it means the presence of a luxuriant growth of bad weeds 

 such as cockleburs, velvet weed, quack grass, Canada thistle, squirrel-tail 

 grass, and the rest of the foul brood. Sooner or later these lands must be 

 sold and will pass into the hands of the better class of farmers who are 

 always more or less land hungry. We regard a farm well seeded with velvet 

 weed or cocj^leburs as damaged not less than ten dollars per acre. We had 



