SUMMING UP. 313 



Roanoke and tlie Wabash have too many fields and 

 fences, and that the too prevalent custom of allowing 

 cattle to prowl over meadow, tillage and forest, from 

 September to May, picking up a precarious and in- 

 adequate subsistence by browsing and foraging at 

 large, is slovenly, unthrifty, and hardly consistent 

 with the requirements of good neighborhood. It is 

 at best a miseducation of your cattle into lawless 

 habits. I do not know just where and when all pas- 

 turing becomes wasteful and improvident ; but I do 

 know that pasturing fosters thistles, briers, and every 

 noxious weed, and so is inconsistent with cleanly and 

 thorough tillage. I know that the same acres will 

 feed far more stock, and keep them in better condi- 

 tion, if their food be cut and fed to them, than if they 

 are sent out to gather it for themselves. I know that 

 the cost of cutting their grass and other fodder with 

 modern machinery need not greatly exceed that of 

 driving them to remote pastures in the morning and 

 hunting them up at nightfall. I know that penning 

 them ten hours of each twenty-four in a filthy yard, 

 where they have neither food nor drink, is unwise ; 

 and I feel confident that it is already high time, 

 wherever good grass-land is worth $100 per acre, to 

 limit pasturage to one small field, as near the center 

 of the farm as may be, wherein shade and good 

 water abound, into which green rye, clover, timothy, 

 oats, sowed corn, stalks, etc., etc., may successively 

 be thrown from every side, and where shelter from a 

 cold, driving storm, is provided ; and that, if cows 

 U 



