SECRETARY'S REPORT. 99 



Mr. Bull. — I do not know much about pastures, for there is 

 not a great deal of pasture land in Middlesex County. The 

 people are engaged in the milk business quite extensively, and 

 our farmers are therefore obliged to own pastures up in the 

 country, especially up in New Hampshire. One of my neigh- 

 bors, who had a pasture up there which had formerly been 

 exceedingly valuable to him, but which, as he supposed, had 

 been overstocked for two or three years, found that it began to 

 fail and he did not know what to do with it. He consulted his 

 neighbors, and was advised to stock it with sheep. He thought 

 that would be the ruin of it, for the sheep is a close feeder, and 

 if there was too little pasture before, how was there to be enough 

 pasture for a flock of sheep in addition to his cows ? But con- 

 sidering that sheep eat plants that cows reject, and considering 

 also that perhaps those plants rejected by the cows were pos- 

 sessing the pasture, and so encroaching upon the better grasses 

 which formerly fed the cows, he did put in a small flock of 

 sheep, and to his great astonishment, his pasture improved. 

 He pursued that method for several years, until that pasture 

 was brought back to its pristine fertility, and fed the same 

 number of cattle that he had formerly kept upon it. I throw 

 out this hint for the consideration of the Board ; not that I 

 know anything about it, but because, if there be anything in it, 

 it would be a very easy and profitable method of renovating 

 pastures, inasmuch as you would stock your cattle and some 

 sheep besides. 



Mr. TiDD. — There are places where it is very difficult to stock 

 with sheep, but where it can be done, I think it is a very effec- 

 tive and very profitable way. I recollect having a pasture once 

 that was infected with hardback, Johnswort, and a variety of 

 noxious herbs of this kind ; I put sheep in there, and it was 

 but a very few years before they were all gone, and the clover 

 was very luxuriant. 



Mr. Perkins. — I know of no vegetable that will stand before 

 sheep except brakes and Johnswort. In a neighboring town 

 to mine, a man had a very good farm, that he kept stocked with 

 sheep ten or fifteen years. We called his pastures sheeped to 

 death. He sold his sheep, and those pastures were allowed to 

 lie unstocked for two years ; then he stocked with cattle, and 

 his pastures were better than ever before. 



