16 MASS. EXPERIMENT STATION BULLETIN 380 



Of course other fertilizer materials were used to supplement manure, such as 

 muck, wood ashes, gypsum, guano, bone meal, poudrettes (night soil), wool 

 wastes, and other materials of greater or less fertilizing value; but it was not until 

 commercial fertilizers as we now know them were introduced and made available 

 in large quantities during the last quarter of the nineteenth century that grass 

 ceased to be the major source of fertility for most forms of agriculture in Massa- 

 chusetts. 



The relationship of the grass crop to other crops and the serious situation which 

 resulted when the grass crop began to fail is described by Goessmann in 1887, 

 as follows: 



A serious falling off in the yield of the grass crop under the described 

 circumstances necessitated a reduction in the farm live-stock, which in 

 turn caused a decrease in the production of manure. Adding to this result 

 the current practice of using the manure obtained from the feeding of the 

 crops secured from the grasslands for the improvement of the ploughed 

 lands, with scarcely any material assistance from outside sources of ma- 

 nurial substances, it is but natural that the productiveness of the former 

 became in the course of time seriously impaired. A scanty supply of 

 suitable manurial matter for the production of the crops raised is to-day 

 universally considered the most fatal circumstance in any system of farm- 

 ing for profit. 5'' 



The fact that the grass crop was able to support the agriculture of Massa- 

 chusetts for almost three quarters of a century is striking testimony to the effi- 

 ciency of this crop as a conserver of soil fertility. With the use of only small 

 quantities of supplemental fertilizers, this crop was able to extend the reserve 

 supply of native or natural fertility over a long period of years. This is in sharp 

 contrast to tilled crops, which, as already shown in the experience of the early 

 colonists, exhausted the reserve of natural soil fertility in a relatively short 

 period of years. 



Pasture Deterioration and Exhaustion 



In 1786 General Warren wrote that "Pastures are never manured and mowing 

 lands seldom. "58 Since essentially the same situation continued on through the 

 nineteenth century, it is not surprising to find that indications of pasture deteriora- 

 tion and exhaustion multiplied as the century progressed. Grass was an extremely 

 efficient user of the reserve of natural fertility, but it could not go on producing 

 indefinitely, for, as has already been explained, the reserve of natural fertility in 

 most Massachusetts soils was not large. It is not surprising either to find that 

 evidence of pasture deterioration is first found in the early settled portions of the 

 State. Not only had the land been cultivated longer, but in many instances the 

 soils in these sections were lighter and more quickly exhausted of their fertility, 

 and in addition the early practice of making land into pastures only after cul- 

 tivated crops were abandoned greatly shortened the life of the pastures. 



The course of pasture deterioration may be followed by noting both the nature 

 and the frequency of the comments which were made over the course of the 

 nineteenth century. The following selected references, arranged chronologically, 

 are an attempt to demonstrate this course: 



Middlesex County, 1795. 



It is a prevailing errour to overstock both barns and pastures; in con- 

 sequence of which, much of our grass land produces less than two, and some 

 that has been wholly devoted to feed, less than one third of what it did 

 30 or 40 years ago . . . ^9 



S'^Mass. State Bd. Agric. 35th Annual Report (1887), p. 164. 

 S^Bidwell and Falconer, History of Agriculture, p. 185. 

 S^Mass. Historical Society Collections, 1st Series, IV (1795), 49. 



