42 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



provoked those efforts on the part of Bakewell and the CoUings, 

 and Elman and Webb, and their compeers, which render the 

 names of these leading breeders as familiar to-day on the banks 

 of the Dannbe and tlie Loire, in Anstralia and New Zealand 

 and California, as they are here in Massachusetts, on the blue 

 grass pastures of Kentucky, or the prairies of Ohio and Illinois. 

 Your accomplished and practical Secretary, Mr. Wyman, 

 expressed the truth which you must often have realized in 

 your own labors on the farm, when he wrote to the " Country 

 Gentleman," six years ago, that the foundation of all suc- 

 cessful culture lies in the preparation and application of an 

 ample supply of manurial material, and that every sort of 

 article which can be made to contribute toward this end, 

 should Ije saved " as carefully as if they were grains of gold." 



The course of English farming, not less than various 

 experiments conducted there and here, shows that in nothing 

 else do we get a more effective combination, or one more 

 universally applicable, than in all the well managed manures of 

 the farm-yard. And the point to which I wish to ask your 

 especial attention is whether you cannot more economically 

 purchase such feeding material for the stock you intend to 

 fatten, as is most readily attainable, and take more pains to 

 produce crops for them — such for example, as fodder corn, the 

 legumes and the roots, than you can to expend your money on 

 the fraternity of super-phosphates, poudrettes and the like? 

 These will doubtless give the farmer a start in securing a 

 position at which he can eventually furnish fertilizing material 

 to supply his own wants ; there are crops, such as roots, and 

 some partially exhausted pastures, on which preparations of 

 bones may be profitably applied in any case, but the great 

 question is to reach such a system of management by the 

 grazing and feeding of stock, as shalf develop the capacity of 

 the land to the utmost, either for that or for any other 

 economical purpose, and then maintain that capacity, by going 

 as little as possible, and not at all, if possible, beyond the 

 home resources of the farm itself. 



III. Dairying. — There is no branch of farming in which 

 greater encouragement is at present afforded perhaps, than in 

 the making of butter and cheese — unless for those so situated 

 as to be able to dispose of the milk itself. "We have learned to 



