152 AMERICAN HUSBANDRY. 



effect much here upon dry soils, though there ita 

 i Ht-cts arc equivocal; but gypsum alone will not 

 suffice t-vcn here. The average product upon our 

 old grass-lauds will hardly average over a ton and a 

 half to the acre. With a biennial or triennial top- 

 dressing of dung or compost, where the sod is in 

 good condition, it is believed the average would be 

 double. 



Meadows are subject to all the evils that are ex- 

 perienced in pastures from mosses, wetness, and the 

 diminution of the finer grasses, besides the greater 

 exhaustion of fertility consequent upon carrying off 

 the annual growth ; and the same measures are best 

 adapted to renovate them. Meadows are generally 

 depastured after the hay has been taken oft* and the 

 rowen partially grown. " After the cattle have been 

 removed,'' says an English writer, " the land is bush- 

 harrowed and rolled.' 1 '' It has been stated, though 

 some question the fairness of the experiment, that 

 the operation of heavy rolling has been found to add 

 six or seven hundred weight of hay per acre to the 

 produce of the crop.* 



The effect of pasturing meadows in the spring 

 upon the coming grass-crop has been a matter upon 

 which farmers have differed, though all agree that 

 heavy cattle should not be kept on so late in au- 

 tumn, or put on so early in spring, as to injure the 

 sole of the sod by poaching it when in a wet state. 

 Mr. Sinclair has stated, that a given space of the 

 same quality of grass having been cut towards the 

 end of March, and another space of equal size left 

 uncut till the last week in April, the produce of each 

 having afterward been taken at three different cut- 

 tings, that of the space last cut exceeded the former 

 in the proportion of three to two ; and in one in- 

 Btance during a dry summer, the last cropped space 

 exceeded the other as nearly two to oue.f It is 



* Derbyshire Report, vol. ii., p. 83. 



t Treatise on Agriculture, p. 113, U4, Harpers' edition. 



