194 BOAKD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan. 



5. Top-dress only porous sod lands, using fine and sol- 

 uble manures ; for it is as vain to top-dress an impervious 

 turf as to satisfy a man's hunger by scattering food upon the 

 skin ©f his cranium. 



6. Never use poor seed, for like produces like ; and the 

 breeder may just as reasonably expect good progeny from a 

 mean parentage as a grass grower satisfactory crops from 

 mean seed. 



7. Understand perfectly the composition of your soils, 

 fertilizers and grasses. It is the only way by which you can 

 know what you are about. This cannot be done without 

 more or less experimentation by the grass producer upon his 

 own fields. Reading and observation only will not suffice. 



8. As a general rule, break up, manure and reseed your 

 grass lands one year before they need it. By so doing you 

 will be more often right than wrong. 



9. Raise as little second-class hay as you can ; for first-class 

 buyers want first-class hay, which is easiest sold and yields 

 the best profit. 



10. Never half manure the seed-bed of a hay field. By 

 so doing one gets half crops of hay, and incurs the labor 

 and expense of two ploughings, fertilizations and seedings, 

 where one might have sufiiced. 



Our agricultural system is just now in transition from that 

 of a receding to that of a coming period. Wonderful dis- 

 coveries in natural science are changing it materially, and 

 ushering in the new spirit of a new age, under whose au- 

 spices special farming has appeared. It embodies a central 

 idea which is the direct opposite of that upon which our 

 fathers wrought. Instead of a little of everything, it sug- 

 gests the raising of a good deal of one thing. How exten- 

 sively it is to prevail, experience has not yet determined. 

 We have something of it in tobacco raising, something in 

 dairying, something in truck farming. We arc likely to see 

 more of it in hay husbandry. 



Mr. Humphrey of New Hampshire. Mr. Chairman, I 

 suppose the meeting is open for outsiders to say a word. I 

 wish to make the inquiry of my friend Walker whether he 

 has visited the farm of Professor Sanborn, where irrigation is 

 in operation, and has been for years? 



