106 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



mention a few of the most pestilent of them. The dock has 

 to each stalk 13,000 seeds ; May-weed, 40,000 ; charlock, 

 4,000 ; burdock, 24,500. There does not seem to be any limit 

 to the period during which these seeds can preserve their 

 vitality. We have known of a piece of gound that had not 

 been ploughed for thirty years at least, which, after the first 

 ploughing in spring, was yellow with the charlock, or " cadlock," 

 as it is called. The dock seed has been known to be in the 

 earth twenty years and then germinate. A blackish earth was 

 found beneath an old building known to have existed over two 

 hundred years ; when this earth was spread abroad, a quantity 

 of corn marigold came up all over it, although it had never 

 been seen in that place. The seeds of some plants, too, will 

 preserve their vitality even after having passed through the 

 bodies of animals, and are frequently propagated by the manure. 

 The corn marigold has been thus spread, and the ox-eyed daisy 

 was thus carried across the State of Vermont. 



Most of the annuals can be destroyed by cutting them in the 

 proper time, say in August, or by pulling them before any seed 

 has formed ; these should either be fed to the hogs then, or be 

 buried in the earth, or a compost pile where they could ferment 

 and make valuable manure. There cannot be a doubt that all 

 those weeds which are allowed to produce their flowers, and 

 then be buried by the action of the plough, tend to augment 

 the fertility of the soil. 



The dock should be taken out early in the spring, and great 

 care should be exercised that the seed does not get into the 

 manure. 



The other class, propagated from the root, like the couch- 

 grass, creeping bent-grass, corn thistle, <fcc., must be taken out 

 by the root. It would be idle to mention any more, particularly 

 the various noxious weeds that annoy the farmer. Nor is there 

 any preventive except care about the manure and clean 

 cultivation. Every weed will yield to heavy manuring and 

 careful cultivation, the chief points of which are to kill every 

 one within reach and suffer none to go to seed. "When weeds 

 and foul stuff grow in a pasture they will be eradicated by 

 feeding the land with sheep early in the spring to a very large 

 extent; indeed, there is no way so effective to kill off brush and 

 briars, and to renovate the old pastures, as by pasturing with 



