158 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



as the manure that is dropped from cattle that you feed with 

 grain — stall-fed cattle. That is most excellent manure. The 

 droppings of cattle in your pastures have a different appearance 

 from the droppings of stall-fed cattle. Now, how are we to 

 obtain this grain to feed to our cattle ? Suppose we bring our 

 corn from New York, Illinois, Michigan or Mississippi, and fat 

 all the beef that we consume in Massachusetts — that would 

 enrich our land ; but would it pay ? The farmers of Illinois 

 say that hogs are the best sacks in which to carry their corn to 

 market ; and it is so. It is admitted that a bushel of corn 

 makes about a pound of pork ; then if we bring the corn here 

 we pay for sixty pounds, and the man at the West pays for ten 

 pounds. Now, the farmers of Massachusetts are greatly inter- 

 ested in having freight reduced from the West. I wish this 

 Agricultural Board would express an opinion coinciding with 

 that of the commercial men and Boards of Trade who are 

 making great efforts now to procure the construction of a ship- 

 canal from the Mississippi River to Lake Michigan, and a canal 

 round Niagara Falls out to Lake Ontario, and a railroad from 

 there to Boston. Now, if it was possible to have freight so low 

 (which we can never expect) that ten pounds of pork would 

 cost only a cent, and sixty pounds of corn six cents, there would 

 be only a difference of five cents against us, in comparison with 

 the Western farmers; which we could afford to pay, because we 

 should have the manure to enrich our farms. 



We have almost every kind of soil here in New England, and 

 why are our farms so exhausted ? I believe we must look back 

 a hundred years for the cause. When Massachusetts was first 

 settled the farmers went into the woods with their axes, cut 

 down the trees and burned them on the ground, forty, fifty, or 

 a hundred cords to the acre. That left a rich coat of ashes, 

 which made abundant feed for their cows, sheep and hogs, and 

 for all their cattle, through the summer ; they had a pretty 

 hard struggle to get them through the winter. About half a 

 century ago our farmers in Massachusetts began to talk about 

 the exhaustion of their pastures. They did not know the cause, 

 but you cannot fail to see the cause. They had been drawing 

 off the potash for fifty years, and had put nothing on. What is 

 to be done with this land — with these sixty acres out of a hun- 

 dred ? There is a great deal of it which is sour, which is not, 



