with a brush-harrow, and then follow it with the drag; and, if the surface is a little rough, it is easy to load it with stone or any thing else, and it will leave the surface as smooth as if done by a roller. It is wonderful, if the land is mellow and well cultivated, what a smooth and beautiful surface you will get with this common drag. Mr. Ware puts a little cleat on the bottom, one inch by three inches. He claims that the advantage of this is, that it fills up the depressions made by the horse's feet in travelling over the mellow surface of the land; and I think it would have that effect.

I would like to say a word, before closing, in regard to the time of cutting our grasses. As I stated before, we have now adopted the practice pretty generally, over the State, of cutting our grasses at least two weeks earlier than was the custom twenty or twenty-five years ago. I think we have gained that much, although it is possible that grass may be cut too early. The time to cut grass, every one will admit, is when it contains the most nourishment. No doubt about that. When is that point? What is it that nourishes the animal? It is certainly not woody fibre. That may serve to give bulk; and, if you add sufficient concentrated food in the shape of meal or grain of some kind, an animal may get along on over-ripe and over dried hay. But, if you judge from the taste and instinct of the animal, you cannot resist the conclusion that early-cut hay, or dried grass, is far more palatable, more to the taste, than late-cut; and, if that is taken as any sure guide, we must conclude that the early-cut grass has a larger proportion of soluble, nutritive constituents than grass after it has been allowed to form seed. Now, if you observe the grasses in pastures, you see that cattle invariably leave such as run up and form flower-stalks, and choose the low, tender, leafy plants, the most succulent, juicy; and we must conclude that such grasses are sweeter, contain more sugar, starch, and other elements that suit the taste, and go most readily to nourish the system, because more soluble. I don't see how we can resist the conclusion that the tender, immature grass-blade, with its young, fresh leaves, is more nourishing than the flower-stalk, even with its seed formed, and well-advanced toward maturity. You may find the same elements in the green grass that you will afterwards find in the ripened seed. They leave the young blade,

and go into the seed and grain as it approaches maturity. In the green state they may be more diluted, more watery; but their cells, the structure of the plant itself, are less woody, and more digestible. A material that is indigestible, that must pass bodily through the animal, cannot furnish much nourishment; and animal nourishment is the main thing that we are after. That is just what we cut and cure hay for.

We have taken a very great step in advance in adopting the practice of cutting our grass earlier than formerly. It was customary, a few years ago, to begin haying the day after the 4th of July, if the farmer and his hired men felt like working then if not, it might be begun a day or two after that. But now, take the State over, I think the practice is to begin not very far from the middle of June. Of course seasons differ somewhat, and the farmer may make a mistake sometimes. We are obliged to fall back upon our judgment and common sense in the last resort; for we must take our chances; and, as the seasons go, I think it is better, on the whole, to begin haying early, if it is practicable to do so. Many farmers object to it, because they think they must get through with their hoeing, in the first place; and that is certainly a matter to be considered. But it ought to be borne in mind, that, with our present facilities for securing this important crop, with our mowing-machines, horse-rakes, and hay-tedders, we can handle the grass-crop infinitely better than we could twenty years ago; so that we are not necessarily driven so much in haying as we were then. I remember the time when we began about the 5th or 6th of July, with the scythe; and nothing else could be touched until August, and sometimes later than that. Now, with our advantages in handling the hay-crop, we can carry on the hoeing to a reasonable extent in connection with the haying. I think that is a practice which ought to be generally adopted. We can keep along the hoeing, and not let the weeds get ahead of us.

Now, with regard to our arable land and the grass that is cut in the regular rotation of crops, there can be no doubt that we have made great improvement in the last twenty years, though not so great, perhaps, as we ought to have made in that time. But how is it with the management of our permanent pastures? Here improved management must

be regarded as the exception rather than the rule; and yet I do not hesitate to say, that, in my opinion, money judiciously laid out in improving permanent grass-land will make a better return than money laid out on our arable land that is kept under rotation.

The production of meat, to be sure, is not the specialty of this State, and it probably never will be; but it is one of the important incidents to every well-managed stock or dairy farm; and economy of production both of meat and milk involves the improvement of pasture-lands to an extent which will enable them to meet the demand made upon them for a greatly increased supply.

Our pasture soils differ greatly in quality. Many of them are rocky, thin, and ill adapted to grass naturally; but with most of them there is hope of improvement, except in sections where they consist of light sand or gravel. To try to improve a pasture of light sand is about as hopeless and ceaseless an operation as we can ever undertake, unless we can prepare a compost of strong, stiff loam, road-scrapings, &c., to correct the natural deficiencies of the soil.

Stronger soils are more promising; and, as a general rule, it is wiser to leave the stronger soils in grass, and to use the lighter for the plough and for tillage.

It is to be regretted that sheep-husbandry has come into such disrepute in this State. I believe it would be for our interest to resort to it to improve our pastures, if for nothing else. I had an old pasture, eight or ten years ago, which had been worn out by being fed by dairy cows time out of mind. Bushes and briers had come in; huckleberry-bushes, alders, mosses, and every sort of botanical specimen, abundant enough to delight the heart of a botanist. It was one of the worst pastures, in that respect, that I ever saw. It was so rough and rocky, that I could not get a plough through it; and the question was what should be done with it. There were about thirteen acres in this piece. I cut the bushes, and put in more than a hundred sheep, a great many more than the pasture could possibly carry. I did not expect them to live on bushes, and knew they would not if I did. It was necessary to give them something to keep them quiet and contented, or they would be jumping over the stone wall. So I bought a lot of cotton-seed-meal, paying thirty-five or

forty dollars a ton; and I fed those sheep every day, morning and night, with cotton-seed-meal. They liked it first-rate, and it agreed with them uncommonly well. I do not remember the exact quantity, but perhaps a pint for each sheep at each feeding; and the moment I went into the pasture they would run to get their breakfast or their supper. The result was, they cleaned out absolutely every brier, and every sumac-bush, and many other shrubs, but not the huckleberries. I could not induce them to eat the huckleberry-bushes. They covered the pasture with manure. It was a delight to see the dressing they gave it. They went through the following winter in good store condition; and the next spring I put on twenty or thirty less, and they went along the second year, and did very well. My original plan was to run them three years on that pasture; and I believe it would have been entirely changed in its character at the end of that time, judging by the improvement that had been made.

The cotton-seed-meal was a great advantage to that pasture.

Cotton-seed makes about the best manure, according to the chemists, of any feeding-substance you can get. But the point I wanted to suggest is this, that we can do something by feeding our cattle while at pasture, either with linseed-meal, cotton-seed-meal, shorts, middlings, or something of that sort, by which they will be adding largely to the permanent improvement of the pasture. I believe that the method of improving rough pastures by sheep is, on the whole, one of the best and most economical methods. But if that is impracticable, if the farmer finds that he cannot take care of the sheep, or is afraid of dogs, the next best way is to feed the cattle with some extra feeding-substance, and keep them as much upon the pasture as possible; and if it is necessary to get the cows up into the yard every night, so that the pasture loses a considerable portion of the manure, then I would return some reasonable portion of it as a topdressing, in the form of compost; or else I would select some concentrated fertilizer. Superphosphate and ground bone make a good dressing, if they can be obtained at a reasonable price. The point is, that money spent in improving our grassland is more judiciously and wisely spent than it is in putting it all into our ploughed lands.

Nothing is better settled than that the grass-crop needs a variety of plant-food to enable it to reach a perfect development. A mixed top-dressing, consisting of nitrogen, phosphoric acid, and potash, is a far more economical application than any one substance, unless it be good farmyard manure, which contains all these ingredients in reasonably suitable proportions. A compost of these essential constituents is now easily obtained. The nitrogen is cheaply obtained in the form of nitrate of soda or Chili saltpetre, guano or muriate of ammonia; the phosphoric acid in bones or pure bone-meal; the potash from pure ashes, or more readily from kainit, or some high grade of the German potash salts. These three indispensable ingredients are used, I believe, in Professor Stockbridge's formula for grass.

There is probably no man whose opinion is worth more on questions relating to scientific or progressive agriculture than Mr. Lawes, whose elaborate experiments at Rothamsted, in England, are well known to every intelligent farmer. He was recently applied to by a gentleman who had a lot of old run-out pasture-land that sadly needed renovation, to know what he should use; and his reply was, Put 1 cwt. of nitrate of soda, 2 cwt. of superphosphate, and 3 cwt. of kainit per acre. How those proportions differ from the Stockbridge Fertilizer for grass, I will not undertake to say; but the leading constituents of the compost are essentially the same, and they constitute a most excellent mixture.

To make the most of our pastures, we ought, I think, to resort to a more extended use of artificial fertilizers, taking greater care to see that they are what they are represented to be, and to supplement the pasture-feed with extra feeding of cattle while at grass, either in the shape of linseed or cottonseed meal, or, what is about as good, perhaps, Indian meal or middlings. By this artificial aid we are enabled to carry more stock, and to keep the pasture constantly improving, instead of running down.

The mistake has often been made by those who were ambitious to do something for their pastures and other grass-lands, -something, perhaps, out of the common run of farm practice, - of applying only one substance. A farmer thinks, from all he can learn, that his pasture wants phosphates; and he makes up his mind that ground bone or bone-meal is just the thing.