PASTURE CULTURE 19 



grown. . . . "^2 Some years later, in 1888, a western hill-town farmer com- 

 plained that the chief difficulty in sheep raising "is not so much on account of 

 dogs as on account of the difficulty in keeping sheep in your own pasture. The 

 abandonment of so many farms in our mountain town has left a large tract of 

 land open [and] there is no place to confine the sheep. . . . "^'* 



This reversion of permanent pasture land to timber land is still proceeding at a 

 fairly rapid rate, though not as fast as during the latter part of the nineteenth 

 century. 



The Causes of Pasture Deterioration 



The causes of pasture deterioration were obvious and quickly recognized by 

 many agricultural leaders. In 1859 the pasture committee for the State Board 

 of Agriculture reported: 



It is known to all who have investigated this subject, that all pastures 

 which have been constantly and closely cropped for many years, without 

 receiving suitable returns, must of necessity be greatly exhausted of those 

 substances which, in the economy of nature, are appropriated to the growth 

 and support of bone and muscle, and to the production of milk; and that 

 thorough renovation can be effected only by restoring those substances 

 to the soil. ^5 



Some years later, in 1872, Levi Stockbridge, in a stirring address before a 

 meeting of the State Board of Agriculture, declared : 



We have all agreed on saying that the cause of this deterioration is 

 perfectly clear and apparent; that it is because we have been building up 

 animal structures, or manufacturing cattle products which have been 

 taken away from the fields that produced them, never to return; that 

 where all the products have not been transported to the market, we have 

 taken the milk for the manufacture of butter and cheese, and the manurial 

 qualities that were contained in the milk left at home have been given to 

 other fields instead of being carried back to the pastures that produced 

 them; and that we have been sending away tens of hundreds of tons 

 annually from these New England pastures in the form of phosphates, and 

 sulphates in the bones of animals, and nitrogen in their muscles and tissues; 

 it has gone in one sweeping current down to our great cities; and then, 

 owing to the most abominable and wasteful system of sewerage which 

 has been adopted, it has been carried to the sea and been lost. We have 

 agreed that this is the cause of the deterioration of our pastures.'^ 



C. L. Flint, secretary of the State Board of Agriculture, summed up the sit- 

 uation in 1877 by declaring that: 



The great besetting sin of New England farming has been, that we have 

 robbed our grass-land to feed our hoed crops and our arable lands. We 

 have done it persistently almost from the first settlement of the country.''^ 



It was also observed that milk cattle exhausted pasture more rapidly than 

 either beef cattle or sheep. This was noted as early as 1859 by the pasture com- 

 mittee of the State Board of Agriculture''^ and also by Flint^^ in 1867. Therefore 

 the shift from beef cattle and sheep to dairy cattle, about the middle of the 

 nineteenth century, was an important factor in accelerating the deterioration of 

 pasture lands. 



■'^Ibid., 20th .Annual Report (1872), Pt. II. p. 77. 

 ''^Ibid.. 36th Annual Report (1888), Pt. I, p. 72. 

 '5lbid., 7th Annual Report (1859), Pt. I, p. 25. 

 '^Ibid., 20th Annual Report (1872). Pt. I, p. 202. 

 "ibid., 25th Annual Report (1877), Pt. I, p. 121. 

 ■'Slbid., 7th Annual Report (1859). Pt. I, p. 27. 

 '^Grasses and Forage Plants, p. 362. 



