there. It falls off, and they cleanse it, get out the seed and give it to us. That is their mode of farming to a great extent. Another idea that people ought to learn is in regard to pastures, that they overstock them. And another, that highland grass for pasturage is worth more than lowland grass. It produces more growth, more milk, butter and cheese. They ought to learn that grass and hay cured properly is worth as much to them as any possible feed they can get. I make the assertion that all kinds of neat stock will grow as rapidly and fat as well and as fast upon the right kind of hay as upon any feed that can be given, corn and grain included. Every thing suffers in the same ratio that hay does by not being harvested at the proper time. For instance, grain made after it is out of the field produces flour worth fifteen dollars; when the same grain stands two weeks later it produces flour that is worth only eight dollars. In these things our farmers are verily faulty. What can we say, and what can we do, to induce them to do better?

MR. FOLSOM. We hear a great deal said about the raising of stock and what to do with it; the raising of different crops and what to do with them; and these are important considerations. You do well to consider them, but there is one other subject I would like to suggest for consideration; and that is, How to raise farmers' sons and what to do with them? I think it worth while for you to make some suggestions to farmers in regard to the manner of rearing sous and what they should do with them and how to induce them to remain on the farm. In my own training a great mistake was made. I was nearly broken down in constitution, when I was a boy, prior to the age of eighteen years. Although I was the son of a kind father he was not always considerate, and the result was, I was driven from the profession of the farmer for which I was intended and which I might have loved. It was the design of my father that I should remain with him, but I had to seek some lighter occupation in which I might succeed; being satisfied that I never could succeed if I remained where only bone and muscle and sinew were called into requisition. I make the suggestion that this Board, if they should see fit, might take it into consideration, and that it might be considered at farmers' clubs. I am glad that it has engaged the attention of some of the wisest and best minds, and that they have provided the Agricultural College, and that you have seen an exhibition, to some extent, of the farmers' sons, and what is being done with them. I think

that the subject is worthy of as serious consideration as the rearing of horses and crops and what to do with them.

PRES. ALLEN. There is a single point which might be alluded to in this connection-the culture of small fruits. One little incident may serve as an illustration. Visiting, not long since, an old friend, the remark was made by the lady of the house, "I wish my boy could go to your college, but we cannot raise the money." Said my wife, in reply, "you might cultivate strawberries and send your boy." That remark the woman treasured up, because she wanted her boy to go to the college. She had pride in him, and she had confidence in me as an old friend. This Fall, that boy made his appearance, and the mother told me, "the money that sends that boy this term is all secured by the sale of strawberries, the cultivation of which your wife suggested."

THE PRESIDENT. Those present would be glad to hear from Mr. Lawrence some further remarks, more especially in relation to his own methods of grass culture. Will the gentleman favor us with his views?

MR. LAWRENCE. I should have some hesitation in relating the details of my own practice and its results so far from home were it not that one of your Board has visited my farm and will corroborate what I may have to say. Since being here, an intelligent and observing farmer from Waldo county, has told me that in that county potatoes and hay have been raised extensively for sale, and that many farms have paid for themselves several times over by the growth and sale of both these commodities. He tells me also, that to-day the farms which had been devoted to raising hay for sale are in much better condition than those from which potatoes have been extensively sold. This was exceedingly gratifying information to me inasmuch as it corroborates my own opinion in regard to the exhausting character of the potato crop, and also that grass is the natural product of the soil. It was my fortune at the age of twenty-four years, to come in possession of a very good farm, by my father retiring to another. At that time I had some ideas of farming, because I had always worked upon a farm, and, although my father had acquired a competency, either himself or through his father before him, I was satisfied he had not acquired it at the present prices of labor, nor even at the prices paid eight, ten, or twelve years ago; and having strong convictions in regard to that matter, I decided upon taking charge of the farm and to manage it in an entirely different way. My first step was to

sell from the farm, at least two-thirds of the stock; and I have annually sold since, two-thirds of the hay grown on the farm. That course might not do so well here, because you may not be so favorably situated to sell hay as I was then; but the raising of grass will do as well for you here, and if the grass does not sell you can feed it to your stock. In adopting this course I had any quantity of advice from the citizens of the vicinity in which I lived, and I had most decided warning from my father, that such a course would result in running the farm out. At that time we had one field of fifty acres; another of seventeen acres, and another of eight acres. The small fields my father kept to cut for his horse and cow. The seventeen acres were sold, and there was left to me the field of fifty acres. After continuing my course of selling most of my hay for six years, and never buying a cord of barnyard manure, and never but one car load of ashes, I am proud to say that I succeeded in raising more hay from that single field than my father ever raised in one year from all his fields together. The last year I owned it our county society offered a premium of fifty dollars for the best cultivated farm in the county, I am proud to say further, that after continuing the system of farming which I have related to you, I' received that premium. In arriving at this condition of things I say also that I had made the farm profitable, because I avoided paying out much for labor. I had been over the country considerably, and I had come to the conclusion that our brothers in the West could raise corn and wheat there much easier than we could here; and that our position as the manufacturing section of the republic indicated the raising of grass as the most profitable style of farming for us, and I turned my attention to that.

My practice is to do most of my farming in the fall. I have raised hardly a bushel of corn in my field, and have never raised anything in my pastures Immediately after cutting the grass, and it is cut very early, in July if possible, I commence plowing, beginning on my low land first and turn it over, and if it is very low (as I have never under drained) I plow it up in beds, harrow and seed it down with an application of bone, Peruvian guano or superphosphate. On my first farm, the one to which I more particularly alluded, I have never brought any manure and never but one car load of ashes and nothing else but ground bone, Peruvian guano and superphosphate. My endeavor has been to practice economy and to make money in this way. In cultivating the first

field and another farm of which I propose to speak, no man has ever got on to a mowing machine or rake of mine but myself; and of the plowing, first and last, seven-eigths has been done by myself as plowman, and with a single teamster.

I have arrived at the conclusion, after pursuing this course, that with three hundred dollars judiciously expended in labor and fertilizers in August and early in September I can improve my farm more and better than I can by consuming fifteen hundred dollars worth of hay (at the price it has been for the last few years) and applying the resulting manure in the ordinary course of farming. That might be conclusive in regard to the first farm, if you accept that. But after I received this premium it operated as it might have done elsewhere. I put that farm into the market and sold it at a round price and then I took another situated about two miles distant, which I knew to be a good one, although it was in worse condition than my first one. It had been treated as my father's farm had been, by consuming all the hay and raising hoed crops, until about ten years before I took it. At that time the gentleman who owned it died and left it to his grandson who tried to farm it. Four years before I bought it some men purchased it to make money. They sold every pound of the hay and did not turn a furrow or do anything except run the farm down. When I first took that farm, four years ago, I put all the hay in four mows, I think not more than sixteen or eighteen tons. The same system that I practiced on my old farm has been practiced on this, except that since the first year I have sold nearly all the hay cut upon it. I have not received any premium upon this farm yet, but this year I inaugurated a system of holding field days in New Hampshire, and asked the farmers to come and see my results upon the farm, and they came, and we had a good, oldfashioned time, which I hope will be kept up by the farmers there, and which I hope will be inaugurated in this State. When my friends of the Board of Agriculture and of the State Agricultural Society, and the agricultural editors with whom I am acquainted, came and saw, they said, "Mr. Lawrence, we have heard your statements. We thought sometimes you exaggerated a little, but you have more than sustained yourself by the exhibition of the farm to us to-day." I assure you that if I ever was proud in all my life it was when taking these friends over the field, and then showing them a barn of a hundred feet in length as full as it could comfortably be with hay.

And having tried this experiment and proved its results upon the soil of New Hampshire, which is not so good as some that I have seen in many parts of your State, I believe, in these days of high priced labor, the same system will do well for you. There is one thing that I had for my advantage and which you must have for yours. In both cases I farmed upon naturally good land, and if I have any advice to give it is this: never attempt to farm as I have related unless upon good land.

If you have poor land let it grow up to wood-at any rate don't try to cultivate it with any expectation of making farming in Maine profitable. You have good land enough, and that you may have success with, if you will treat it as I have done.

The pitb and substance of all I can say upon this matter can be put in very few words-MANURE IS CHEAPER THAN LABOR-and in saying this I wish it to be distinctly understood that I am not now speaking in the interest of any manufacturer of commercial manures. I simply give you my experience, as a farmer, in the treatment of grass lands.

One thing more I must mention which has been a wonderful aid to me, and which may create a smile, but my story would be only half told without it. I have placed great reliance upon the fertility resulting from the decomposition of the sod turned over, and which is the natural result of having the land full of witch-grass! In some investigations made in western Massachusetts upon land much like mine, there was found in no acre of a large field less than thirteen tons of vegetable organic matter, such as roots and the matter pertaining to the sod, which, if turned under would be equivalent to manure and help enrich the soil.

My low ground is naturally herds-grass land; upon that I generally put twelve quarts of herds-grass seed in the fall, and in spring perhaps four quarts more. Observation would show if it was needed and where to put it. But upon my high land I put none at all. Year before last, the very first of August I plowed four pieces of the highest land in my field, and a few days later Hon. J. B. Lyman came up to see me with his family. He said, "You have not seeded this piece." "No, I have fertilized it, but don't intend to put any seed on it." "What do you expect to get?" "Grass, and I expect it from the witch-grass roots underneath." Five or six weeks afterwards he came up again and went out to see this piece and had to hunt some time to find it.