PASTURE CULTURE 17 



State as a whole, 1841. 



... in general nothing is more disreputable to the large majority of 

 farmers throughout the State, than the conditions of their pastures. ^^ 



State as a whole, 1840-1850. 



The pasture lands were increased more than 100,000 A., with scarcely 

 any increase of neat cattle, and a reduction of 160,000 sheep and 17,000 

 swine.^i 



Middlesex County, 1853. 



A large proportion of land, formerly improved as pasturage or tillage 

 land, is now under a promising growth of young wood.^2 



Essex County, 1853. 



Pasture lands for the past twenty years have been on the decrease. 

 Except where they are ploughed and manured, they become mossy, run 

 over to bushes, and are rapidly getting into wood.^^ 



In many of our pastures it is now literally a struggle for life or death 

 between the cow and the grass, from spring to autumn, and often neither 

 has vitality enough to exult in a victory. ^^ 



State as a whole, 1853. 



... in nearly one-half of the whole State there is a gradual and constant 



decrease, much of the land formerly tilled being given up to pasturage. In 



• very many towns the number of acres in pasturage, also, is decreasing, 



many old pastures having become so poor as to be abandoned to bushes, 



or converted into woodland. ^5 



State as a whole, 1859. 



. . . the grazing lands of the State are greatly exhausted — feeding from 

 one-sixth to three-sixths less stock than the same fed twenty-five to forty 

 years ago.^^ 



Worcester County, 1863. 



It seems to be an established fact that the pastures in this vicinity are 

 not as good as they were once. In them bushes and briars more easily 

 take the places of some of the best grasses; they need ploughing oftener 

 and require larger applications of manure to make them hold good, and it 

 is said they need almost constant care and labor to keep them from running 

 out." 



State as a whole, 1867. 



Many of our old pastures have been stocked hard, time out of mind, and 

 the grasses in them have been literally starved out, and grow thin of 

 necessity, while, as the finer and nutritious grasses disappear, nature very 

 kindly covers up the nakedness of the soil with moss, as an evidence of the 

 effect, and not the cause of poverty. . . . Many of them are grown over 

 with bushes and briers, and other equally worthless pests, till they carry 

 but an animal to four or five acres, and often require twice that amount to 

 keep an animal on foot, to say nothing of fattening him.fi* 



State as a whole, 1872. 



The Board of Agriculture have agreed to this: that there has been a great 

 deterioration in the producing power of our pastures during the last fiftj' 

 or one hundred years; that the time was when the hillsides of Massachu- 

 setts, those fields that are now our pasture-lands yielded large quantities 

 of sweet nutritious grasses, — grasses which made butter, which made 

 milk, which made cheese, — grasses which made beef of splendid quality. . . . 



^•'Agriculture of Massachusetts, 4th Report (1841), p. 398. 



filDavid A. Wells, The Year Book of .Agriculture (1855-1856), p. 215. 



^^Mass. State Bd. Agric. 1st Annual Report (1853), Pt. I. p. 70. 



63lbid.. p. 69. 



^''Mass. Agricultural Societies Transactions (1853), p. 74. 



^^Mass. State Bd. Agric. 1st Annual Report (1853), Pt. I, p. 69. 



•'^Ibid., 7th .■Annual Report (1859), Pt. I, p. 24. 



"Ibid.. 11th Annual Report (1863), Pt. II, p. 209. 



^^Flint, Grasses and Forage Plants, p. 355. 



