84 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



practicable, because the best pasture lands would, to a large 

 extent, be unassailable by the plough, and injudicious, because 

 old pastures, if well kept, are reckoned decidedly more nutri- 

 tious, more fattening, more permanent, and as producing 

 what is called sweeter feed. Top-dressing with manure is 

 generally out of the question ; there is none to spare from 

 the mowing and tillage land, and the expense of hauling it 

 out into the pasture land, even if there were a sufficiency, 

 would be impracticable. Gypsum or plaster of paris, at the 

 rate of two hundred pounds to the acre, or wood ashes, or 

 the two combined, make the best and cheapest top-dressing 

 for pastures. It is said that scratching a pasture with a 

 sharp-toothed harrow and sprinkling grass seed produces 

 good results. If a pasture is to be re-seeded, either by 

 ploughing or harrowing, there is nothing like orchard grass to 

 put in, if the land is strong or reasonably moist. It is peren- 

 nial, comes the earliest of any grass, and is green the lon- 

 gest ; cattle will turn to it early in the spring and feed on it 

 till late in the fall. 



One of the best-educated farmers in Franklin County, who 

 made a reputation far beyond the limits of the county, was 

 for years in the habit, not only of cutting the brush and pick- 

 ing off' the stones, but of knocking to pieces and scattering 

 the droppings of the cattle, at any time when it was dry 

 enough, and consequently had a great supply of the best 

 feed, and raised the best steers in the count3^ 



Over-stocking a pasture is poor farming and should never 

 be allowed, and so it is not considered good policy to pasture 

 on the same land horses, cattle and sheep ; but a large and 

 most successful breeder of fine-woolled sheep in Northern 

 Berkshire told me this fall that in a large pasture he allowed 

 fifty or sixty Spanish merinoes to feed with his herd of dairy 

 cows with no detriment to either. 



There is no doubt that grazing sheep on pasture land 

 greatly improves it, and would be largely practised but for 

 the everlasting curse of dogs. I cannot so well present this 

 matter as in the words of one of the most intelligent and 

 earnest of sheep growers in this State twenty-five years ago : 

 " We have constantly had under our eye a hundred-acre lot, 

 upon which, a few years ago, cattle could not live, that now 



