PASTURES AND PASTURING. 159 



readily pulled. But if earth has washed in, as it sometimes 

 will near the banks of streams, and the limbs have fallen 

 down and then rooted again, it may be more difficult to get 

 hold of -it. 



Mr. Grinnell. I think the difference between Mr. Gold 

 and INlr. Sedgwick may be reconciled in this way. I have 

 pulled acres of hardback, but you must start early. If you 

 begin before they are two years old, they pull easily ; after 

 ihcy become old it takes a horse to pull them. But the 

 treatment of hardback, as I stated last night in regard to the 

 daisy, is to pull it. You miist, however, Start betimes, 

 before they get large. Either of these things the first or 

 second year can be pulled without difficulty. 



Mr. Pierce. Is there more than one kind of hardback? 

 The hardback which he shows is not what we call hardback 

 in Worcester County. That is a little plant which grows 

 up some two feet high and has a pink pyramidal blossom, 

 and does not branch out to any great extent. 



Mr. Gold. In the one place I speak of the hardback as 

 both the spirea and the poteutilla, and in the other place I 

 speak only of this potentilla, which is called " Goshen hard- 

 hack " and various other names by us ; and it so far surpasses 

 the other plant that we ignore that entirely. The spireas 

 are comparatively harmless shrubs. 



Mr. Brooks. That is what we know in Princeton. 



Mr. Heath of Stockbridge. Do you know anything 

 about a plant called "devil's rattle-box?" In Stockbridge 

 the town is being overrun with it. Its one redeeming qual- 

 ity is that cattle will eat it in the green or dry state. 



The Chairman. Can't you describe it so that he can 

 identify it? 



INIr. Heath. It grows say fifteen inches in height and 

 bears a pod that is full of seed, like mustard and tobacco 

 seed, — very fine seed. It has a white blossom. 



Mr. Gold. I do not recognize the plant, sir. 



IVIr. Williams. I will add a little more to that descrip- 

 tion, being from Stockbridge, and having seen something of 

 it. Some parts of the town are covered with it. I have 

 been told that where a field is thoroughly filled with it, it 

 will take a yoke of cattle to draw a plough through the roots. 



