250 [AS6EMBLT 



This land had been used to good husbandry, and often been 

 top dressed in this way. It is very ditfereut with land with lit- 

 tle grass upon it, and no soil, no heart to bring it forth and start 

 it early in the spring ; and perhaps never had anything, or very 

 little put upon it to give it heart and soil, and what little grass 

 there was upon it, fed close otF the season through. Manure 

 upon such a surface, exposed to a hot summer's sun, and nothing 

 to protect it, would do very little good ; its essence, or much the 

 greatest portion would be lost by evaporation. Those who form 

 it in this way, certainly have no right to complain of the useless- 

 ness of surface manure on grass land ; such land can only be put 

 in fine grass, by the spreading of a good coat of barn yard manure 

 over it, and immediately ploughing it in, and that deep and 

 thorough, and sowing it with grain and grass seed, the old 

 fashioned way of restoring old worn out pasture fields. Sor?:e 

 farmers put dung on their pasture grounds in autumn, near win- 

 ter. This cannot be so good, it is spending the essence of the 

 dung before the time required to give a spring to vegetation ; it 

 lays all winter in a passive state, that is, no action from it that 

 «an benefit plants. These are more than passive, they are tor- 

 pid or temporarily dead, and no useful combinations can take 

 place between them, the one cannot consums food, and the other 

 is in no state to yield it. Donaldson says, "the application of dung 

 to grass lands during the frosts and thaws of winter should not 

 be practiced ; the juices are washed away from the dung when 

 the land is not in a state to receive it ; rains and snows dis- 

 solve the subtances, and both elements are in a state where no 

 useful combinations can be eifected." He decidedly recommends 

 the spring in preference to autumn or winter. 



Insects. — Our grasses with all our plants suffer very much from 

 insects, and this evil is increasing in our country ; we have more 

 heat in summer, than many parts of Europe, and this multiplies 

 the enemy, makes them more active and vigorous, aud more able 

 to do miscliief. As the population of our young country increases, 

 our forests cleared up and cultivated, our plants increase in 

 number aud variety ; the delicate flowers and seeds of tlic various 

 grain, fvuit and oruaniental plants, afford a more abundant and 

 palatable food; for this destructive enemy, like most animals, in- 



