80 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



families. Bones, if thrown into a barrel and covered with ashes 

 and moistened, will after a while, become decomposed, so as to 

 form, with the ashes, a valuable fertilizer, and well worthy of 

 practice in the making. Hard coal ashes, if screened thor- 

 oughly, are worth saving, and hauling a short distance to spread 

 on grass land, containing some lime, and some wood ashes 

 remaining from the kindlings, and charcoal. Wood ashes form 

 one of the most valuable of all fertilizers, and ouglit to be 

 saved with jealous care, and are, at the common prices, a safer 

 fertilizer than any other to be purchased. 



The deterioration of pastures comes in as a prominent waste, 

 and is one which for years has engaged the attention of thinking 

 men in the Commonwealth, with less action, and less knowledge 

 how to act, than in any other branch of farming operations. 

 We have elaborate treatises on mowing, tillage and grain lands, 

 and crops ; boastful reports of some one solitary acre, that has 

 yielded over a hundred bushels of corn, while perhaps the rest 

 of the farm suffered for the benefits of that favorite acre. We 

 have minute directions as to the best method of ploughing, 

 making hay, raising crops, feeding stock, improving swamp 

 lands, but seldom any practical and proved method of improving 

 pastures. We have all heard of the nameless man who " makes 

 two blades of grass grow where one grew before," but he would 

 seem to have confnied his attention to grass for hay. A marked 

 exception to this charge, however, is an able article in the 

 Transactions of the old Massachusetts Society by its then Sec- 

 retary, from which we shall quote : " Although much has been 

 said, of late, upon the necessity and importance of restoring 

 fertility to our pastures, but little practical information has 

 been offered as to the best and most economical methods of 

 attaining that object. We seem to be afraid to look the evil in 

 the face and to measure the extent of it ; a feeling of discour- 

 agement seems to come over us whenever we meet to talk about 

 it, and many of our most intelligent farmers seek temporary 

 palliation merely, or else abandon their pastures to their fate, 

 leaving them to go back to their original condition of bush and 

 forest." 



The land usually appropriated to grazing purposes has been 

 that which, from its position or its soil, or from tlic combined 

 causes, is considered the least available for cultivation. Hilly 



