48 BOAKD OF AGRICULTURE. 



THE HAY-CROP. 



The hay-crop of the country has also grown up almost 

 entirely within the last hundred years, and considering the 

 necessity that exists throughout all the northern portions of 

 our territory for stall-feeding all stock from three to six 

 months of the year, it has an importance there which it 

 cannot have farther south. It has been asserted that the 

 hay-crop, instead of forming a legitimate part of our national 

 agricultural production, and going to swell the aggregate of 

 its money-value, ought rather to be regarded as a tax imposed 

 by the severity of the climate — a tax involving a vast amount 

 of labor and time and money to which the farmer in our 

 milder latitudes is not subjected. There may be some 

 shadow of truth in this view of the case, and yet, like all 

 other apparent hardships, it has its compensations, as the 

 history of the various parts of our country abundantly demon- 

 strates. 



There is scarcely anything which a person who has become 

 accustomed to the fine close carpet of green with which 

 nature covers every hill-side and every landscape in our 

 northern sections, would dispense with so reluctantly as the 

 green turf of our natural grasses. But the greatest com- 

 pensation to be found is the facility Avhich the production of 

 grass and hay gives for keeping up and increasing the fertility 

 of our lands. The system of stall-feeding, for which the 

 making of hay is designed to provide, is the only system by 

 which a constantly improving mixed husbandry can be sus- 

 tained ; and the want of it may be assigned as the true cause 

 of the exhaustion of the lands of Virginia under the constant 

 culture of tobacco. The only substitute for it is the soiling 

 system, and that becomes impracticable of general application 

 in a country where pasturage and browsing are abundant and 

 cheap. 



The artificial production of hay is of comparatively modern 

 origin, as I have shown; but within the last quarter of a 

 century it has increased with great rapidity, especially since 

 the introduction of the numerous labor-saving machines has 

 put in our power to cut and cure our grasses so quickly and 

 so cheaply. At the time of the first appearance of this prod- 



