IMPROVEMENT OF PASTURES. 355 



in the roots over winter for the early use of the plant. 

 If it is closely fed, the spring growth must be propor- 

 tionably later and feebler. 



But one of the most important questions which the 

 farmer in the older sections of the country has to meet 

 is the proper treatment of his pasture lands. Many of 

 our old pastures have been stocked hard, time out of 

 mind, and the grasses in them have been literally 

 starved out, and grow thin of necessity, while, as the 

 finer and nutritious grasses disappear, nature very 

 kindly covers up the nakedness of the soil with moss, 

 as an evidence of the effect, and not the cause, of 

 poverty. They are said to be " worn " or " run out." 

 Many of them are grown over with bushes and briers, 

 and other equally worthless pests, till they carry but 

 one animal to four or five acres, and often require twice 

 that amount to keep an animal on foot, to say nothing 

 of fattening him. It is a well-known saying, that " poor 

 pastures make breachy cattle." 



Undoubtedly, thousands of. acres in the older states 

 would be far more profitably covered with pines than 

 with cattle, and many an observing fanner is now con- 

 vinced of this fact ; but still we must have pasture 

 lands, and there are circumstances where it becomes 

 important to improve them, and increase their produc- 

 tiveness. Some of them are so situated that they can 

 be ploughed, and thus brought in, with other cultivated 

 lands, to the general rotation ; and where this can be 

 done, it may be, on the whole, the best and most eco- 

 nomical mode of improving them. 



In answer to the circular on a preceding page, an 

 intelligent farmer writes me: "I have renovated my 

 old pasture land by pulling up the bushes by the roots, 

 scarifying the foul or mossy places with the harrow, 

 and sowing on grass-seed and clover, both red and 



