82 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



sparinjily stocked that the cattle kept upon them, before winter 

 sets in, can be driven home in good condition for winter fare. 



But to tlie effect of over-stocking upon the pasture itself, and 

 by consequence upon the whole concerns of the farm. If fed 

 down close, the roots of the grass and herbage arc first exposed, 

 perhaps to the burning heat of a dry summer, greatly to their 

 injury, and perhaps in a following winter to frosts of extreme 

 severity : thus the destruction of a great proportion of the 

 grass-roots is completed, the finer grasses are killed out, and 

 the coarser and less fattening rendered more worthless. It 

 must be some years before such pastures can )jc recovered, by 

 great care and judicious treatment. Resulting from this over- 

 stocking is the damaging but too common practice of many 

 farmers of removing their cattle from the pastures in the fall, 

 and turning them into the mow-fields after the crops have been 

 gathered, where they remain till they are housed for the winter. 

 Let the first motto be, feed your pastures sparingly. But not 

 only are pastures injured by over-stocking with cattle, but there 

 is a constant tendency to deterioration from the increasing 

 growth of bushes, weeds, and foul stuff, that deform the land 

 and destroy the feed ; the best lands are subject to this evil, 

 and there they will make the greatest encroachments. The 

 first step should be to attack the bushes, briars, sweet-ferns, 

 brakes, hard-hacks, and all sorts of worthless stuff", with the 

 brush-scythe and bog-hoe. These pests, we hardly need to say, 

 destroy the nutritious quality of the grasses, they shade and 

 sour the feed, and exhaust the land. Destroy them, or they 

 will destroy the land. Coarse herbage will gradually displace 

 the fine and more nutritious kinds ; briars and bushes come 

 next in nature's rotation, to be succeeded at last by the forest, 

 to which almost all lands tend. The farmer has therefore a con- 

 , tinual struggle against this natural law of vegetation, unless he 

 wishes, like the land he cultivates, to return also to his primal 

 condition. This work of extermination is to be repeated once 

 a year, or at least every other year, till the work is finished. 

 There is no better time for tins good and profitable labor than 

 some of the last days of August. After a few years these pests 

 will disappear. But this is not enough ; some further means 

 of improving pastures may be applied, about which diversity of 

 opinion and practice exists. Something fertilizing must be 



