338 [Assembly 



" duction of animal life, are now ascertained to be previously form- 

 " ed by plants, as well as starch and sugar, and are all assimilated 

 " and modified by the animal functions. The three first substances 

 " have been by the chemist extracted from plants, and their analysis 

 " is precisely similar to those yielded by animals." 



I have heard farmers object to soiling, for the reason that they 

 imagined frequent cutting of meadows had a tendency to exhaust the 

 soil, and would injure it more than depasturing. I have found, by 

 actual experiment, that such is not the fact. You may mow a field 

 ten times during the summer, and the injury will not be as great as 

 it would to cut one crop of hay, to say nothing about the manifest 

 destruction of roots, by poaching, &c. You injure grass but little 

 by constant mowing, provided you do not permit it to go to stalks 

 and seed. It is the formation of stalks and seed that exhausts the 

 humus, "and other valuable ingredients in the soil. If you remove the 

 ■grass before the seed is developed, but little injury will accrue to the 

 land. It is necessary that the agriculturist should draw upon his 

 lands sufficient manure to keep the humus to his soil always the 

 same. If he does this, his land will yield him a crop of grass a.r\- 

 nually for a term of years. 



Should meadows be so located as to allow them to be overflowed, 

 it will be unnecessary ever to manure them, as they will appropriate 

 to themselves from the slime contained in the water, the requisite 

 enriching properties to grow grass crops continually. Without ir- 

 rigation in the southern parts of Italy and France, fine crops of grass 

 cannot be raised. In the neighborhood of Avignon in France, they 

 find it necessary to irrigate even their potatoe fields. The inhabitants 

 of Tuscany irrigate all their crops, wheat, beans, &c. The inhabi- 

 tants of this country never irrigate, whatever their facilities may be. 



I think farmers err in laying too great a stress upon the necessity 

 of importing foreign stock ybr dairy purposes. It has no doubt been 

 found by many importers, who have experimented fairly, that our 

 improved native cow gives as much milk the year round, yields as 

 much cheese and butter, stands the climate better, and is kept at as 

 little expense, as any of the imported cows in the same condition. 

 At all events, if such has not been the experience of others, it has 

 been mine. The apparent supposition upon which importers act, is, 

 that they suppose an extra high priced imported animal, must neces- 

 sarily produce a superior stock, when it not unfrequently happens 

 that those very animals, by judicious selection, have but two good 



