28 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



But it is said that when land is exhausted it may be left to 

 grow to wood, and thus renovate itself. It argues but small 

 knowledge of the ways and works of nature to believe that the 

 stunted growth of pine or birch, which such land can only 

 produce, and even that cut off and carried to market, can 

 replace in the soil those constituents, vegetable and mineral, 

 which are essential to its fertility, whose original accumulation 

 was the result of ages of elemental strife, and of countless 

 repetitions of the growth and decay of vegetable and animal 

 existences. 



" Time was, ere England's griefs began, 

 When every rood of ground maintained its man." 



When, through ill management, land has become so com- 

 pletely exhausted as to be worthless for cultivation, it is doubt- 

 less advisable to allow, and even to promote upon it, as far as 

 possible, the growth of wood, for the reason that it cannot be 

 made useful in any other way. But no acres of land not now 

 exhausted should ever be so treated as to become capable of 

 producing a meagre growth of forest trees. If any farmer has 

 more cleared land than he can use as land should be used, let 

 him sell to his neighbor who has none ; if unwilling or unable 

 to do this, he can allow it to grow to wood, while yet it has 

 some power to sustain vegetable life, with the certainty that it 

 will, at least, " hold its own," and be of value to those who may 

 hereafter have need of it. 



Stock raising and stock feeding should have a more prominent 

 place than they now have in Plymouth County farming. Keep 

 stock, and your stock will keep your farms. This proposition 

 involves no question as to the comparative merits of different 

 classes of stock for different uses. It is not based on any real 

 or imaginary superiority of Jerseys for the dairy, of Devons for 

 •the yoke, or of Shorthorns for the shambles. Keep Jerseys, 

 Devons, Shorthorns, grades or natives, as shall seem to you 

 best, but keep something. And not only keep stock, but 

 increase it. Present appearances indicate that a long time 

 must elapse before the supply of any of the products of a stock 

 farm will equal the demand, and that, not only for ])resent 

 profit but for permanent improvement, every farmer should 

 keep his stock well up to the capacity of his farm for sustaining 



