156 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



deal of interest to the address of Prof. Stockbridge, and also to 

 the remarks of the gentleman last up. It is a fact, that when 

 we take the experiments of different individuals, in different 

 sections of the State, we find there is often a strange conflict 

 between them ; and it seems to me that in nothing is so much 

 judgment required as in agricultural experiments. If a me- 

 chanic is going to perform a certain piece of work, he ascertains 

 almost to a dollar what it can be done for, and in what time he 

 can do it ; but when we come to the farm, and want to know 

 what it will cost to produce a certain number of bushels of 

 corn, or so many pounds of butter or cheese, we cannot make 

 our calculations with any exactness, because there are so many 

 conflicting things that come in to disturb our estimates. If we 

 can instil into the minds of the farming community this idea — 

 that if we would take from the soil certain crops, we must sup- 

 ply the waste that is occasioned by the operation — we shall do 

 something that will be a benefit to the farmer. The idea that 

 we can be continually taking from the soil without returning 

 anything to it, is almost the same as if a man, possessing a 

 certain amount of property, should suppose that he could spend 

 that property all the time and still not exhaust it. It will be 

 exhausted ; an end will come to it. 



I have never been so struck with the difference in cultivation 

 as I was when I visited the society at Greenfield, and went to 

 Shelburne Falls and saw Mr. Anderson's farm there, and the 

 manner in which the farms adjacent to it were cultivated. In 

 the one case the soil was very productive ; in the other it pro- 

 duced very little indeed. The reason was, that in one case it 

 was highly cultivated and fed ; in the other case it was neg- 

 lected and starved. It brings to my mind the anecdote of the 

 man who, when asked how he got such good crops from his 

 fields, replied : " I hire my fields to produce." How can we 

 expect our fields to produce if we do not do something for them, 

 instead of constantly taking away from them ? 



The idea advanced in the lecture, that grass is an unprofitable 

 crop, or that it is an expensive crop, did not seem to me to be 

 true ; at least, in certain sections of the State. In the section 

 of the State that I represent, — in Worcester County and Hamp- 

 den County, — the grass crop is the great crop, and it is the crop 

 that we must rely upon to feed our stock for dairy purposes. 



