166 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



is a great feeder on salt, or else the salt produces such an effect 

 upon the manure that it enables the mangold to take it up. Put 

 into those drills well decomposed manure, provided with a cer- 

 tain supply of salt — the refuse of the beef-packers or salt-fish 

 dealers ; any kind of salt will answer the purpose. We used to 

 buy it for six or seven cents a bushel ; you cannot get it as 

 cheap now ; but get it as cheap as you can, and put it in. Then 

 have those drills smoothed a little on the top, and sow your 

 seed as early as you can. Be sure and have it well covered. 

 It is one of the most difficult seeds to germinate, and will not 

 germinate unless the earth is so close about it as to retain a 

 uniform temperature and moisture. It needs that very much 

 indeed. Your mangolds, if treated in this way, will come well. 

 You can get a crop of from ten to twelve hundred bushels to 

 the acre. Much larger crops have been raised. 



A Voice. I have raised nineteen hundred bushels. 



Dr. . LoRiNG. On Deer Island, they report that they raise 

 eighty tons to the acre, an enormous crop. That is the process 

 of raising mangel-wurzel. And these two crops, properly 

 handled, and properly used, are two of the most valuable crops 

 to the dairyman and cattle-feeder that can possibly be raised in 

 Massachusetts. 



There is one other point. Prof. Chadbourne alluded to this 

 matter of feeding the after-math. I agree with every word he 

 said. " You cannot eat your pudding and have it too." No- 

 body doubts that. Even the treasurer of the Agricultural 

 College cannot draw his check, and have his money at the same 

 time. But, my friends, I said distinctly, that it involved the 

 necessity for the cultivation of grass, just as you would culti- 

 vate any other crop. I say it is cheaper for a man, if he has 

 got a good herd of cattle and a profitable herd, — and no man 

 ought to have a poor one or an unprofitable one, — to feed them 

 upon his grass land in the fall of the year, than it is to under- 

 take to carry them over from the 15th of September to the 

 middle of November without green feed. It is more profitable 

 for him to do that, and cultivate his grass in proportion. Prof. 

 Chadbourne said that it required good farming and high culti- 

 vation, and I think he said, perhaps higher than you can afford 

 to cultivate here in this end of Massachusetts. Tliat is not so. 

 You can afford to cultivate just as well in Berkshire as we can 



