216 BOAED OF AGRICULTURE. 



is it applicable only to Herkimer County ? We want to know 

 what is the best thing for all farmers to use. Here I find 

 there is a great deal of snow on the ground, and there will 

 probably be more during the season. For the last three or 

 four years, in the vicinity of New Bedford, we have had 

 hardly enough snow to get a sleigh out. We cannot rely on 

 having the grass-roots covered by snow, which is sometimes 

 called the poor man's dressing, and if there is any one here 

 whose knowledge of the different portions of the State is 

 sufficient to enable him to give us information which will be 

 applicable to farmers in every portion, I, for one, would be 

 very much pleased to hear it. 



Mr. Root, of Barre. This grass question is perhaps the 

 most important to the farmer of any question that can come 

 before him. The grass-crop of New England surpasses all 

 other crops in importance to-day. The question of what we 

 shall keep our cattle on during the winter, and what we shall 

 feed them with during the summer months, is more important 

 than all other agricultural questions which can come before 

 us. The difficulty in prescribing just what should be done 

 in every case grows out of the fact that the cases are all so 

 very different. What may be a good application for a man 

 living on the sandy beaches of the shore, may not answer up 

 in Berkshire County, may not answer over in the Mohawk 

 Valley. I believe t e doctrine of my friend from Herkimer 

 County is the true doctrine, and will apply to every individual 

 case, that water and mud are healthy for grass. My own 

 observation teaches it wherever I have seen it tried. I 

 remember in my boyhood days my father dammed up a 

 brook that ran through a meadow, and turned a current of 

 water during the winter months over a piece of land that had 

 hardly the slightest vegetation, and in a short time by throw- 

 ing on fowl-meadow grass-seeds, and the seeds of other water- 

 grasses that grow in the low lands, a thick coating of grass 

 came up, over which you might drive a lieavily-loaded team. 

 A friend of mine was looking over my farm in Barre a few 

 months ago, and I was telling him of the unfortunate condi- 

 tion our farming-land was in, owing to the drought of the 

 past few years. Said he, "Can't you irrigate?" Said I, "I 

 have no springs on this high land." This friend had been 



