10 BOARD OP AGRICULTURE. 



quantities of flesh or milk may be obtained from new pastures, 

 and perhaps even more from land cropped for soiling cattle, 

 but I know of no region especially celebrated for the excel- 

 lence of its butter, cheese, or even flesh (especially of mutton), 

 where the animals are not largely fed from old pastures. 

 When you find a farmer whose butter or cheese is celebrated 

 in the markets for their especial excellence, you will find 

 that his pastures are largely of this kind. The dairy region 

 of Eastern New York is a good example in our own country. 

 In Europe, the famous 8\vi^s cheese is produced mostly from 

 pastures that have never felt the plow, and the old pastures 

 of England and Holland are similarly celebrated. 



I know not how long a time is needed by a pasture to ac- 

 quire its greatest excellence, doubtless it is not a definite 

 period, but a time varying with the climate, soil, uses and 

 treatment. I heard a farmer in England say that it took 

 forty or fifty years to get a good pasture, according to his 

 standard, but a hundred years was better, and he spoke with 

 special enthusiasm of some that were three or four times as 

 old as that, but this is longer than we wish to wait. 



A few years ago I spent two years in Europe, and visited 

 some of the most noted Agricultural regions there. I went 

 directly from a comparatively new section of our own country 

 where the land had been mostly cleared from the forest in a 

 single generation, and moreover it was a grain growing region, 

 the fertile farms of Western New York. Nothing in the Old 

 World struck me more forcibly than the character of the turf. 

 Neither the ruined castles, nor grand cathedrals, nor works 

 of art made a more vivid impression than the old lawns and 

 pastures, with their wonderfully green surface like velvet, 

 their firmly-knit texture like old fulled cloth, the variety of 

 species that enter into their composition, their nutritive value 

 and the quality of their forage, and the excellence of the but- 

 ter, cheese, and flesh produced. 



The mountain pastures of Switzerland, never disturbed by 

 plow or spade since the country emerged from barbarism, are 

 types of one class. For centuries the better kinds of grass 

 have been fostered, a surface application of rotted manure, 



