260 THE AMERICAN FARMER. 



ured portions; if the food is abundant and good, the good grasses drive away all the weeds 

 and bad grasses, and the ultimate result is a very simple herbage, consisting of not more 

 than from fifteen to eighteen of the best species. The constant mowing, although it enables 

 us to establish a great deal of valuable information respecting growth, is, at the same time, 

 most destructive to the finer sorts of herbage; it cannot be expected, for instance, that much 

 white clover will be found amongst grasses standing three feet high, and yielding 7,000 

 pounds of hay to the- acre; with liberal manuring, therefore, there must be close feeding, and 

 the coarse but highly nutritious cocksfoot and foxtail must not be allowed to smother the 

 clover and trefoil. 



Having once started a permanent pasture by means of a judicious mixture of artificial 

 manures, the question arises whether it is more economical to keep up the fertility by a 

 fresh application of artificial manures, or by the manure obtained by feeding stock upon the 

 land with food grown in other localities ? It is not easy to decide this point. I am myself 

 inclined to think that the latter process is the most economical, and, in the conversion of ara 

 ble into pasture land upon which operation I have been engaged for the last ten years I 

 have trusted to the fertilizing properties of the manure from cotton-cake to enable me to ac 

 cumulate the stock of fertility which, being exhausted by ages of arable culture, had to be 

 replaced before the land could again become a pasture. 



When hay, which is the product of arablel and, is grown for sale, it is by no means 

 certain that the increase, obtained by the application of artificial manures, would repay the 

 cost of the operation. Nitrate of soda, at the rate of 100 pounds per acre, applied in the 

 spring, about a month before the crop began to grow actively, would probably give a consid 

 erable increase to a crop of timothy, but I cannot venture to give an opinion as to what 

 would be the pecuniary result of the transaction. 



Sunlight is cheaper than all artificial sources of light, and natural fertility is cheaper 

 than any artificial compound; in the absence of sunlight we have recourse to purchased 

 light; and as the natural fertility is exhausted from our soils we are driven to use fertility 

 derived from other sources. 



It is the object of science to investigate and explain the laws which regulate the growth of 

 plants, rather than to enter upon the question of economy. In the present paper I have en 

 deavored to unite, to a certain extent, science with practice, in the hope that the farmers of 

 the United States, who take the trouble to read what I have said, may add something to their 

 present stock of knowledge.&quot; 



Old pastures that were formerly arable are often excellent lands on which to cultivate po 

 tatoes or corn, but the expense in many localities of fencing such plats is an item to be taken 

 into account as to whether this would be a remunerative practice. In many sections where 

 land is cheap and the soil poor, it may be best to let certain pasture-lands produce a growth 

 of timber. By plowing with a strong plow, furrows can be turned from six to ten feet apart, 

 and in these trenches may be sown the seeds of such varieties of trees as are desired, and 

 also that are best adapted to the soil. As has been previously stated, sheep are excellent 

 renovators of pasture-lands, and will destroy to an almost incredible degree the weeds and 

 bushes. Hogs, when kept in large numbers, will also answer the same purpose by being 

 penned in limited sections. For this purpose movable fences are necessary, and when they 

 have rooted and exterminated the noxious vegetables in one part, remove them to another, 

 and so on until the work is accomplished; but this is a rather slow method of clearing up a 

 pasture. 



Clearing land of worthless bushes and shrubs by hand is a laborious and expensive task t 

 Hardhack can be killed by mowing off the shrubs annually for three years in succession, late 

 in the summer. Alders are more difficult to exterminate, especially where the growth is 

 large and dense, but they may be conquered by cutting and burning. Juniper can be 



