HAY AND HAY-MAKING. 151 



acres each, keeping thereon a cow or two and often 

 a horse, fail to make returns of the two to five tuns 

 of Hay they annually produce, considering them too 

 trivial, I estimate the actual Hay-crop of all our 

 States and Territories for the current year at 

 40,000,000 tuns, or about a tun to each inhabitant, al- 

 though I do not expect the new Census to place it 

 much, if any, above 25,000,000 tuns. The estimated 

 average value of this crop is $10 (gold) per tun, 

 making its aggregate value, at my estimate of its 

 amount, $400,000,000 and the quantity is con- 

 stantly and rapidly increasing. 



That quantity should be larger from the area de- 

 voted to meadows, and the quality a great deal 

 better. I estimate that 30,000,000 acres are annually 

 mowed to obtain these 40,000,000 tuns of Hay, giving 

 an average yield of 1 tuns per acre, while the average 

 should certainly not fall below two tuns per acre. 

 My upland lias a gravelly, rocky soil, not natural to 

 grass, and had been pastured to death for at least a 

 century before I bought it ; yet it has yielded me an 

 average of not less than 2 tuns to the acre for the 

 last sixteen years, and will not yield less while I am 

 allowed to farm it. My lowland (bog when I bought 

 it) is bound henceforth to yield more ; but, while im- 

 perfectly or not at all drained, it was of course a 

 poor reliance yielding bounteously in spots, in others, 

 little or nothing. 



In nothing else is shiftless, slovenly farming so apt 

 t< betray itself as in the culture of Grass and the 



