SECRETARY'S REPORT. 93 



Manure then being an essential element, how are we going to 

 obtain it, except from our domestic animals, that from cattle 

 being better than any fertilizer which can be bought. Guano, 

 super-phosphate of lime, ashes, and plaster, all are good in their 

 places, to cause a quick start, a rapid, luxuriant growth, and an 

 early maturity of the crop ; as an adjunct to barnyard manure 

 they are most valuable, but they are stimulants, and for perma- 

 nent effect they lack the organic and other fertilizing properties 

 of dung. 



The only object in fattening cattle in Massachusetts at the 

 present time is for the manure. The more meat we make, the 

 more manure we get, the more corn, grain, and other crops we can 

 grow. Without manure we couldn't grow a crop, without the 

 crops we couldn't feed the cattle, without the cattle we couldn't 

 have the manure. The mere statement of this is enough with- 

 out any argument to prove it, and to show us, as Mr. Mcchi 

 says, that a farmer should always send his crops to market on 

 four legs. Hon. John Brooks, of Princeton, one of the most 

 shrewd and observing farmers in this Commonwealth, in a 

 sound article written for the Transactions of the Worcester 

 North Agricultural Society, shows clearly enough that those 

 farmers who draw hay into towns and villages, and haul manure 

 out, make a daily loss by the operation. 



This brings us, naturally enough, to consider the wastes from 

 want of economy in feeding, watering, sheltering, and the 

 general care of all stock ; a subject sufficient in itself for an 

 extensive essay. Perhaps to the eye of one passing through a 

 farming district in the winter, the most cruel and noticeable 

 waste would seem to be in the insufficient shelter afforded the 

 poor brutes during the inclement season. It is true, and grati- 

 fying to know, that a great improvement in this respect is 

 annually advancing in this State. New, tight barns, with 

 warmer sheds, and great cellars beneath for storing and making 

 manures, filled with deep bays of sweet, early-cut hay, with- 

 stables full of warm, well-fed, contented cattle, quiet and thrifty, 

 are pleasant places to visit. Now the effect of temperature, 

 the necessity of keeping stock warm and comfortable, has been 

 so often proved in this country and England, and is so seldom 

 questioned, that one is astonished to see cattle and milch cows, 

 as well as young stock, standing nearly the whole of a winter's 



