PASTURES AND PASTURING. 153 



dry knoll will often accomplish wonders ; or the water of a 

 snow freshet turned on a hillside will make returns far ex- 

 oeeding the cost. 



Warping, which Webster defines, from Gardner's farm dic- 

 tionary, as " the process' of enriching land by producing a 

 deposition of the earthy matter suspended in rivers, which is 

 accomplished by inundating fields for a short time," may 

 often be practised with advantage, not only for enriching the 

 soil but changing its nature, filling up swamp holes and cov- 

 ering rocky and uneven surfaces. Taking advantage of the 

 spring freshets, some useless bank of earth may thus be 

 transferred and deposited in the best shape upon some wet 

 spot, where drainage would not be available. I have seen 

 useless, miry muck, thus converted into fine, productive pas- 

 ture. 



Weeds and Buahes 



infesting our pastures may be classed, first, as noxious ; 

 second, as arrant thieves, taking possession of the soil and 

 crowding out useful vegetation ; and third, as coming as occu- 

 pants of an otherwise vacant surface. The lines between 

 these classes are not clearly drawn, so that many of them 

 would, in some cases, appear in more than one class. As 

 noxious, we name, among shrubs, mountain laurel or calico 

 bush {Kahnia Jatifolia), low laurel or sheep laurel (ZT. 

 angustifolia) , white bush {Andromeda) ; and among herbs, 

 ■white hellebore ( Veratrum viride), Indian tobacco {Lobelia 

 inflata) and St. John's wort {llyperieam perforatum) . All 

 these are reported to be poisonous when eaten by animals, 

 which is rarely done except from stress of hunger, or when 

 animals are taken from places where these plants are unknown 

 and are first exposed to them. 



The poisonous nature of many of these plants is denied by 

 some, but facts within my knowledge sustain their bad repu- 

 tation. Destruction of the pest is the ordinary remedy ; but 

 in one case I have known an acre infested with sheep laurel 

 to be fenced ^?^, by a good farmer, to keep his sheep out. It 

 is only in extraordinary circumstances that any of them are 

 cropped by animals, hence the opinion that they are not 

 poisonous. 



