174 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
will ultimately retain its hold, and become perma¬ 
nent pasture. But such pastures should not be 
cropped closely, at first. They should be fed light¬ 
ly, or not at all, until the roots have become well 
matted into the soil; and if the growth of a season 
or two be suffered to lay and decay upon the sur¬ 
face, so much the better for its permanent good. 
Another fault, very common with many people, 
and rather taking in its theory is, the frequent 
changing of stock from one pasture to another 
during the Summer, giving them “a fresh bite,” on 
the idea that “ change of pasture makes fat calves.” 
Such is an old adage not half understood. That a 
change of pasture, absolutely eaten down to noth¬ 
ing, into one full of grass is beneficial, no one will 
deny ; but a change for the sake of a change is all 
nonsense. Animals love their homes more than 
their changeable-minded masters are apt to ap¬ 
preciate. They never like to leave an old range 
for a new one, so long as the old range gives them 
a fullness of stomach, and every good stock- 
keeper knows that fresh, watery grass scours 
animals when newly turned upon it, while the 
well-ripened, solid grass of the old fields keeps 
them regular and healthy. That a change of food 
is desirable to cattle we know, but that change 
should exist in the food of the same field, not a 
necessity for the change in several different fields. 
We have a large pasture, containing as follows : 
A low slip of marsh, yielding a coarse, long, wa¬ 
tery grass, incapable of drainage from bordering 
a river; a tract of second bottom, not natural to 
the clovers, but full of red-top, fowl-meadow, and 
other rank herbage; a portion of dry upland, 
where the clovers, timothy and blue grass abound ; 
and, finally, a belt of open woodland, where 
grass freely grows, with some succulent weeds. 
These tracts are all within the same inclosure, 
and have been used by us for years past, as a 
common pasture for horses, sheep and cattle. The 
sheep prefer the dry ground, mostly, but oftentimes 
go down and crop the second bottom and woodland. 
So with the horses ; but the cattle, every single 
day during the Summer, plunge into the marsh land 
and gorge themselves with the coarse water- 
grass, particularly in the mornings; then on to the 
uplands, where they lie and ruminate ; then into 
the second bottom ; after which, another rest ; 
and their late afternoon meal is taken on the high¬ 
est land they can find. Sometimes they vary their 
diet as to time, but such is the round, in one way 
or the other, that they take, and all the grounds 
are fed off in turn. No man likes roast beef and 
plum pudding in constant succession. He occa¬ 
sionally prefers a dinner of boiled pork and corned 
beef, with coarse vegetables and brown bread, 
and a hearty Indian pudding to whip syllabubs or 
custards. So with the lower grazing animals ; 
variety with them is the spice of life. 
A word before we close, as to the economy of 
partitioned pastures. They require many fences, 
to which, in farm management, we are decidedly 
opposed. If we had a cropping farm, where 
plowing was the chief source of our productions, 
we would prefer that such crops would grow 
within a single inclosure. Our meadows should 
all be in one. And in pastures, we would have 
but two, or three at farthest. It is not in the 
change of pastures that we derive benefit to our 
stock ; we suffer more frequently by over-feeding 
_too much stock for the land. We have known 
a whole herd of cattle abominably poor through¬ 
out the season, although their pastures were 
changed once a fortnight. We have known other 
stock, as fat as may be, that only ranged one field 
an entire season. Our best graziers, and our 
most experienced dairymen prefer but one range 
oi uasjure for their bullocks and cows—separate 
of course, when both are kept—for the Spring, 
Summer and Autumn. If mixed farming, or 
cropping is a part of their practice, the stock will 
be admitted, as occasion may require, for gleaning 
the surplus food in the grain fields, after the crops 
are off] or to consume the after-math of the 
meadows, but the pasturage is a permanent and 
continuous affair. 
In England there are large dairy and grazing 
districts, where the ground has not been broken 
by the plow since the Conquest, that any body 
knows of, and their owners would not have them 
broken at any price, so valuable do they consider 
an old turf. In many parts of America, fields of 
meadow and pasture have so lain ever since the 
land was first cleared—more than two hundred 
years—the most valuable mowing and pasture 
they have. So, in constant use have been plow 
lots. An old farmer, upwards of seventy years 
old, once showed us a lot which he said had ne¬ 
ver been laid down in grass more than one year 
at a time, during his life-time, nor in that of his 
father before him, and that was over a hundred 
years, so natural was it to grain and vegetables ; 
but it had had good culture, and abundant manures. 
The proper application of land to the right purpos¬ 
es, with our increasing facilities for reaching the 
markets, are learning us sound lessons in many 
branches of agriculture, and division of labor ; 
not among the least of these, are the proper un¬ 
derstanding and treatment of our pasture lands, 
on a small scale even, as well as on a large one. 
- -~HB ©!*»-► «- 
Reapers and Mowers, &c.V. 
[Concluded from page 142.] 
To the Editor of the American Agriculturist. 
In my first four numbers, I discussed the 
Trial of Reapers and Mowers by the United States 
Agricultural Society, at Syracuse, last July, and 
the Report of the same. In order to complete the 
subject, and further to show how little depend¬ 
ence can be placed upon reports of Judges at these 
“ Great Trials of Implements,” so called, I now 
propose to refer to the Trial of Mowing Machines 
hy the Massachusetts Society in July, 1856, for a 
prize of $1,000, and compare its decisions with 
that of the one at Syracuse. During the Massa¬ 
chusetts Trial, there were three Judges, and they 
subjected the machines to a much longer and 
more severe test than was done at Syracuse. In 
this one respect, (greater amount of work,) the 
trial was a much better one than that at Syracuse; 
but to make amends for this, the decision was the 
very worst which could have been given on the 
occasion, as I shall proceed to show. 
There were ten entries to begin with, but some 
withdrew previous to the trial; others were 
thrown out while it was going on ; leaving at the 
close only four competing machines, viz : Ketch- 
urn’s, Manny’s, Allen’s, and Henderson’s, or 
“ Heath’s,” as they designate it, which was known 
as “Caryl’s,” at the Syracuse Trial. The three 
Judges in this case did not subject the machines 
to the test of the dynamometer, nor indeed to any 
other mechanical or scientific test. Being shrewd 
Yankees, they had a more simple, and I dare say 
(to themselves) more satisfactory method of re¬ 
solving knotty points, and that was upon the prin¬ 
ciple of guessing ! 
1. They guessed , that the “Heath,” alias 
“ Caryl,” machine was less liable to clog than 
any of its three above mentioned competitors. 
2. They guessed, that it “ very evidently re¬ 
quired less power of draft.” 
3. They guessed, “its cutting apparatus as 
very much superior.” 
4. They guessed, “ in other important features, 
it is equal to the other machines.” 
Lastly, with solemn gravity, not unusual with 
distinguished dignitaries on like occasions, they 
guessed, after having used the word “ important ” 
no less than three times in rapid succession that: 
“ We, therefore, unhesitatingly, confidently and 
unanimously, express the opinion that the Heath 
machine, entered by D. C. Henderson, is entitled 
to the premium of one thousand dollars.” 
Was there ever anything more scientific, em¬ 
phatic, or autocratic 1 For further particulars I 
beg to refer the reader to the Massachusetts Re¬ 
port itself. Pages 297 and 8. 
Now let us turn to the Trial of the United States 
Agricultural Society, at Syracuse, where this 
famous thousand dollar prize machine is en¬ 
tered as “ Caryl’s,” and let us hear what the 
eighteen Judges on that august occasion have to 
say on these various five "points , guessed out so 
“ unhesitatingly, confidently and unanimously,” 
by the three Massachusetts Judges. I quote 
from' the printed Syracuse Report. 
1. Clogging. “ The reel worked ill and the ma¬ 
chine clogged. Mr. Caryl (Heath) therefore aban¬ 
doned the lot and notified the chairman that he 
was no longer a competitor.” Page 73. 
This is in other words, as I understand it, equi¬ 
valent in a delicate way to ruling out his machine, 
as unworthy further trial. 
2. Draft. By careful trials with the dynamom¬ 
eter, they make the Caryl (Heath) machine show 
115 lbs. more direct draft than the Allen machine, 
and 30 lbs. side draft—the Allen showing no side 
draft whatever. The Manny (Wood) 88 to 93 lbs. 
less direct, and 27 lbs. less side draft. The 
Ketchum 81 lbs. less direct, and 26 lbs. less side 
draft. Pages 75 and 76. According to the opin¬ 
ion of the Judges, page 51, this would make a 
difference in favor of the Allen and against the 
Caryl (Heath) machine, in a day’s work of ten 
hours, equivalent in round numbers to 5,220,000 
lbs. That is to say, the team every day of ten 
hours work, in cutting over the same ground and 
the same quantity of grass, would, attached to the 
Caryl (Heath) mowing machine, be obliged to 
drag five millions two hundred and twenty-two 
thousand pounds more than if attached to the Al¬ 
len machine; and so relatively of the Manny 
(Wood), and Ketchum! 
Yet the Massachusetts Judges had the assur¬ 
ance to guess this Caryl (Heath) machine the 
lightest draft of all its competitors. Whether 
correct or not, I leave the wise men of the East 
and West to decide the matter between them¬ 
selves. 
3. Of the “ cutting apparatus,”-the Report says: 
“It requires great thickness of blade to prevent 
them from bending up when dull.”....“ As soon 
as the knives are dull, or a joint, or rivet loosens, 
it must necessarily clog and work badly.” Pages 
45 and 46. 
4. As to other “ important features,” the Judges 
do not seem to be favorably impressed in regard 
to its cam motion, as they say, “ There is a great 
loss of momentum in this machine.”-“The in¬ 
creased weight consequently augments the mo¬ 
mentum and wastes force, hence the great thump¬ 
ing noise and waste of force.”....“ The open 
space between the cams are liable to become 
covered and filled with earth and to wear the 
rollers,” &c. 
Upon the strength of that thousand dollar award, 
the patentee forthwith proceeded to dispose ol 
rights to various manufacturers counting largely 
on their future gains from the purchase. But what 
was the result the following season 1 Disgrace at 
the Trial of the United States Agricultural Socie¬ 
ty; and not a single purchaser of the machines 
