12 MEADOWS AND PASTURES 



pasture at night, but die owner forgets to credit the pas- 

 ture for helping in their upkeep and conducing greatly to 

 their health. When he has his plow lands well under hand, 

 he turns longing eyes toward his pasture, and probably 

 sets the fence in so that he can plow a slice of it and add 

 it to the field. It is doubtful whether he has any acre of 

 plow land that is making him more clear profit than the 

 same width of pasture land, yet he knows it not. It has 

 never occurred to him to drain his pasture land, to feed 

 it. to lime it perhaps, and make it more profitable. 



The purpose of this book is to bring this matter of 

 permanent grass and clovers, the meadows and pastures, 

 before farmers, helping them to see the profit that may 

 be had from them, helping them make two blades of 

 grass grow where only one grows now. It is high time. 

 The year of 1910 witnessed almost a famine in many 

 cities, with foods so high in price that men, women and 

 children have made great outcry, and with good reason. 

 The way to feed the people is not to plow more land, 

 but better to till what land is plowed. To feed the 

 people we must first broaden our permanent pastures, and 

 make them more productive. An acre of bluegrass has 

 produced 500 pounds of beef in Virginia. An Illinois 

 cornfield with a 4O-bushel 'crop (above the average for 

 that state) \vould make fewer pounds of beef or pork. 

 The Virginia pasture is not eroding and is losing its 

 fertility at least much more slowly than the land planted 

 to corn, given cultivation and exposed for seven months 

 to leaching and washing of rains. I know grazing farms 

 in Virginia that have yielded $15 per acre in beef and 

 lambs and colt flesh. Laying down lands to pasture or 



