228 [Assemble? 



than green grass and is not so easy of digestion. Starch changes- 

 to sugar, and sugar to acidity as the plant ripens. Sugar is de-^ 

 veloped by stirring flour and water together, so that when pro- 

 perly worked, the water has a sweet taste as if it had been sweet- 

 ened with sugar. All experience shows that all plants should be 

 cut in that state in which the saccharine principle is most fully 

 developed, and then cured for hay in the shortest time possible 

 to do it well, and housed from weather, and be as little exposed 

 to the open air as possible, whether it he dry or wet. Our Presi- 

 dent, Mr. Pell, closes all the openings in the barn where he keeps 

 his hay. One effect of this is to keep the hay green in color to 

 the last of the season. Grass grown upon land properly prepared 

 and manured for that purpose is more readily cured than other 

 grasses not so treated. An animal will choose the straw which 

 has grown upon land properly treated as to its organic constitu- 

 ents, &c., in preference to that from lauds not in right condition. 



Mr. Solon Robinson — The remark of Professor Mapes in rela- 

 tion to grass from a sweet and proper soil keeping better than 

 others, is fully proved by the grass of a bog meadow, which is 

 known to be the most difficult kind of hay to keep sweet in stack 

 or mow, because it grew upon a sour soil. There is no doubt that 

 great additional value can be given to hay by feeding the roots of 

 the grass with such constituents as will make the hay a rich tood 

 for the cattle. The curative power of grasses depends upon their 

 perfect organism. The same number of pounds in weight do not 

 decide, for the constituents will differ in the hay. Cattle decide 

 readily which parts of a pasture are most properly treated in 

 every particular, by feeding up to the very line established by a 

 proper over a bad treatment of the pasture. As they require 

 phosphate of lime, soda, &c., prepare a part of the pasture with 

 these, and other parts of it without, and the cattle will point out 

 with an unerring precision, which man could not, the lines of 

 boundary of the proper food, I ought to remark here that an 

 ancient complaint of the pasture giving out, is owing to its never 

 having been properly tilled or subsoiled. When thus deeply and 

 properly tilled, the grass however trodden by the hoof, tillers ouS 

 new shoots, and the pasture lives» 



