ference for some spots, and for some kinds of grass over others, picking out these spots to the very surface of the soil, while they leave others untouched; the grasses thus left, will throw out flowering culms, which bear seed; it thus happens that the more undesirable kinds are increasing themselves by the self-sowing of their seeds. To prevent this, the scythe should be used. If the flowering culms are cut off before they mature their seed, their roots send up a rich aftermath, which in its fresh state, is greedily eaten, and thus the uniformity of the sward is maintained. It should be a settled rule never to allow grass or weeds to go to seed upon the pastures. Cutting off the roots of grasses is often resorted to successfully to increase the thickness of the sward in pastures; for this purpose, sword-shaped blades are inserted into a horizontal bar, about ten inches apart, which is drawn over the pasture, penetrating the soil to the depth of four or five inches; this is repeated once in five or six years, and in years when this is not practiced, much benefit will result to it from going over it in the spring with a sharp tined harrow.

It will be found advantageous to divide pastures into smaller lots than farmers usually do; the grass when it affords a good bite should first be fed off by milch cows and fattening beasts; when the first flush of the feed has been depastured they should be removed into a fresh lot and be followed by the young cattle and the store cattle. When the fattening beasts have had a good bite of the second lot, they should be removed into a third pasture; the store cattle from the first should follow them into the second lot and these should be succeeded into the first lot by sheep. The fatting should be turned into a fourth lot when they have taken off the best feed in the third and so followed by the store cattle and sheep in rotation, while the first lot is left vacant. When a good bite again springs up in this the fat cattle should go into it again, and the different classes should thus follow each other all the season, leaving one lot to recruit all the time. In this way all the feed is eaten off evenly and one lot is always recruiting and the sweetest grasses are not destroyed by overfeeding. This plan involves a large outlay for fencing materials but I am convinced it will prove the most profitable method. There is a method of laying down new meadows by transplantation somewhat in vogue in England which I have never seen practiced in this country. Strips of turf two and one-half inches thick and seven inches wide are pared off from alternate sections

of an old pasture and removed to the field which it is intended to convert into meadow; it is here cut into pieces about three inches square at such distances, that the nine square inches of turf shall be surrounded by eighty-one inches of space and then pressed into the soil with the foot or with a wooden ramrod. If the transplanted sod is deficient in any of the valuable grasses they may be sowed on the vacant spaces in the field from which the sod has been taken as well as on the one which has been planted and both covered with a coating of manure. It is said that the vacant places left in both fields will soon be filled up with offshoots, and a well filled turf be obtained sooner than any other way,

Before closing my remarks, allow me to call your attention to an implement, a comparatively new one, and although, as I understand, introduced to some extent in this State, it is one which might be used to very great advantage by thousands of your farmers who probably have not yet so much as heard of it, I refer to Nishwitz's pulverizing harrow. It will be found a most efficacious implement in the restoration of grasses into many of your fields and pastures where the grasses have suffered severely by reason of drought and grasshoppers. It will effectually cut up the ground and render it fit for the reception of seed. I would apply fertilizers first, if possible, then go over it with this implement, at once incorporating the manure with the soil and pulverizing both together. If any grass roots remain, they will now start into more vigorous growth, and your seed will have the best chance for coming along also. In my opinion on all such lands. which are adapted to its use, (it cannot be used to any advantage on rocky soils,) it will be found invaluable.

MR. THING. After you have used this Nishwitz harrow, and put on your fertilizers and sowed your seed, would you recommend rolling on dry ground?

MR. GOULD. I would, if there is a prospect of dry weather; but if rain comes soon after, there is no necessity for rolling. If it is sandy upland, I should roll it; there is too much air admitted within the interstices of the soil on loose land, and I would advise the use of the roller, whether rain is coming or not. But in ordinary cases, in dry soil, I think the roller is useless, except to give a smooth surface.

COL. SWETT. How is it on granitic soil?

MR. GOULD. That varies very much. Some of it packs a great

deal more than others; some is light and loose. On the loose kind I would use the roller; on the more compact kinds of soil, I would not, provided there is any prospect of rain coming on soon after.

QUESTION. In case you desire to change the grass on a meadow to timothy, will the Nishwitz harrow cut up the old turf sufficiently to give a catch of the new grass?

MR. GOULD. It will. You will need to put in a variety of manures; that is the great secret. Feed your meadows well. I endeavored to explain that point. I said that every kind of grass requires a different kind of specific food, and just in proportion as you combine the variety of food in the soil is the number of plants that will grow in a square foot. Put on manure of all kinds, and you will prepare the land for the production of all kinds of grasses. QUESTION. On low meadow with a muck bottom where the moss is three or four inches deep, will that same process answer? MR. GOULD. Yes, sir, provided you sow the seeds adapted to your soil, and otherwise do as I have described.

MR. The greatest difficulty is to get rid of the moss. MR. GOULD. The Nishwitz harrow will do it if you will use it in dry weather. I think that implement is the greatest contribution to the farmer that I have ever known. The miserable oldfashioned tooth harrow is the most wretched tool ever placed upon a farm. A good many farmers have an idea that the old tooth-harrow pulverized the soil; it does pulverize it a little on top, but you know how it is with your road makers. If they make a new road and want to settle it, what do they do? They do not take a roller; they take the old-fashioned tooth-harrow. So it is with your race-courses. If you will inquire of your horsemen, you will find that race-courses are always laid down with an old-fashioned harrow. That is the way they pack them. Now, the Nishwitz harrow instead of packing it, will make the soil loose, so that the air can penetrate into it. A new harrow has been lately invented by Mr. John J. Thomas, which for one purpose is the best that is made. There is no other implement which will smooth the surface like John J. Thomas' harrow. It is admirably adapted to land where you propose to use a mowing machine; and it is one of the best things ever invented for the corn crop. By going over just as soon as the blade makes its appearance above the ground, it will effectually destroy all weeds, and the corn will grow astonishingly. Even after the corn gets

to be an inch high, going over it with the Thomas' harrow works admirably. It cuts up the weeds, and it so arranged that it never can clog. It leaves the ground perfectly smooth, and destroys all weeds without injury to the corn, and in a way that I have never seen done by anything else.

MR. POOR. As our grass has been almost destroyed by the grasshoppers and the drought, what would you recommend to bring the land into grass again?

MR. GOULD. I recommend this very process. great deal upon top dressing.

I should rely a

You have the old roots there, in a very weak condition. If they are nursed, they will come into vigorous growth; and the earlier you begin the better.

QUESTION. What kind of top dressing would you use ?

MR. GOULD. That depends entirely upon the peculiarities of your soil. A man is simply a quack who stands up in a meeting of this kind, and pretends to say what is the best manure for any particular soil. The great principle to be observed in manuring is to restore to the soil the missing elements which were in it. If there is a deficiency of lime in the soil, then calcareous manures, chalk, lime and plaster, are the manures best adapted to restore it. If the deficiency is in phosphates, give phosphatic manures; give ground raw bone, give good superphosphate of lime; give it in any form that will restore phosphoric acid. If the deficiency is nitrogen, give sulphate of ammonia or nitrate of soda, or anything which contains it. First find out in what the soil deficient; chemistry will give you light, but if you want to learn in a practical way what mauure is best adapted to your soil, do as I recommended you to do to ascertain what kind of grass in best adapted to your land. Measure off eight or nine square rods of your meadow or pasture, and on one of them put phosphate, on another plaster, on another ashes, on another lime, on another nitrate of soda and so go on with the different kinds of manures the action of which you want to investigate on the grass, leaving one of the squares without any manure whatever. Mow off from each square rod on the same day the amount of grass that has grown upon it and weigh it in a green state. But do not decide yet; let all be converted into hay. Do it carefully; do it with your own hands, if necessary, only be sure that none of the hay from one of the squares is mixed with that of another square; then when your grasses are thoroughly dried, (let them all be equally dry,) weigh each portion, and the whole story is told you at once. If you find

that one kind of manure gives you four pounds of hay more on your rod than that which was unmanured, then you know that four times 160 will be the amount of extra hay got from an acre by the use of that particular manure. You know what you can sell that extra hay for. Suppose 500 pounds is the result; you know what 500 pounds of English hay will bring; then calculate how much it will cost to put that manure on 160 square rods, and the measure of profit is given you, as it can be in no other way. It is a very easy thing to do, if you will only take the trouble. In that way you will learn precisely what kind of manure your soil requires, and you will also learn what you can afford to pay for any kind of manure whatever.

MR. PARIS. Will not plowing, in the mode you speak of to-day, and top-dressing the land, restore the ordinary grasses to an old field that is bound out, without the application of more seed?

MR. GOULD. In many cases it will, yet it is generally profitable to put on seed. I would always put on seed; it will almost always pay.

MR. PARIS. We find difficulty in getting different varieties of seed. There are very few kinds of seed preserved.

MR. GOULD. Only let the demand come, and there is no doubt whatever that there will be a supply. The reason you do not get them is because there is no demand. The reason I have spoken with what you will, perhaps, call an unwarrantable degree of energy, is because I want the farmers to rise to a nobler ether, to breathe a diviner air, than they have been accustomed to. I do not want to see farmers sitting quietly down without effort to improve. I want to see them day by day acquiring higher knowledge, and a more philosophical comprehension of all the principles. underlying their business. That is why I speak so warmly.

MR. HERSEY. In your opinion, will the grasses of which you have spoken flourish in Maine as well as in New York?

MR. GOULD. Undoubtedly they will wherever the soil is suitable naturally, or is fitted to their wants by suitable culture and manures. You have, without doubt, all, or nearly all the varieties to which I have alluded, growing naturally in different parts of your State. The grasses are generally well diffused over large breadths, and although those which you sow intentionally are more common, there is no difficulty in growing many others.

MR. PARIS. The grass crop and the apple crop are of vital importance to us here in Maine, for they are about the only two