Mr. McGinnis -I am heartily in sympathy with what Mr. Cheever has said in regard to clover. My plea is for you to include blue grass among your grass resources, not exclusively. If we have got a dozen resources in the way of grasses let us utilize them. My observation shows me that it is a fact that blue grass will thrive here, and thrive well. By all means let us not pay exclusive attention to one grass, but let us use every string in our bow.

Mr. Allen-I did advocate yesterday, as you remember, sowing mixed grasses for pasture. There is nothing in the world that you can use that will renovate your land so thoroughly as clover, but for making a pasture the mixture of grasses is a most decided benefit.

Mr. Hoxie-I think if we had some experiments made in our agricultural experimental station to tell us just the length of duration of germination of our seeds that we grow on the farm, it would be a good thing. I am quite sure that blue grass seed over two years old, will not germinate, but it would be a great thing if we had a table from our experimental station that we could rely upon.

Mr. Austin- My opinion is, that in a permanent pasture you can not afford to ignore blue grass.

PASTURAGE AND GRASSES.

BY C. A. HUNT, SPARTA, WIS.

My first thoughts have been the want of knowledge among the farming community as to their best interests in the matter of grass for pastures and for hay. We have dropped into the habits of our fathers in using two or three varieties of grass, without any knowledge of whether the soil that we own is properly adapted to those kind of grasses or not. We have been in the habit when we have wanted a piece of pasture, to take that piece of land that we have worn out for something else, that has been entirely exhausted, and would not raise white beans, then we go and seed it with old timothy seed, red top or something else that

we ought not to expect a good return from.

We turn our

old mooley cows onto that pasture and expect them to come up at night with their bags full of nutritious milk, after they have worked hard all day long grubbing at that grass in that poor piece of land. This is one of the great reasons that we do not get better returns from our pastures.

This

is one of the points on which we are getting instructions from these gentlemen here, how to make those lands do better. There are hundreds of farmers, even here, who have dropped down to the use of only two or three kinds of grass, while there are many others that would help our land and make permanent pasture. We find among them Hungarian or millet, fox-tail or bottle grasses, timothy, red-top, wood grasses, hair grass, several varieties, meadow, oat and velvet, Reed, Melic, rattlesnake, quackin grasses, spear grasses, English ever, barley and wild rye

grasses.

Now, the question has arisen in my mind how are we as farmers, to distinguish those plants which the Great God of nature has given us, that are best adapted to our use and to the soil that we wish to put it on. I believe many of us fail to make money from year to year, because we do not know how to practically demonstrate those things, so that we can put them in use, and it seems to me that this is a point where our Experimental Station or Agricultural College could come to our aid as farmers, and illustrate to us those very things, designating to us what kind of grass is best adapted to such and such varieties of soil, and doing it in such a way that we could use it. That seems to be a speculative theme among those whom I may term agriculturalists. There is a distinction between the agriculturalist and the farmer, the farmer is the man who makes his farm support him, the agriculturalist is the man who supports his farm, and there is a wide distinction, and it comes to the point that with us farmers it is all we can do to make ends meet by our industry on our soil. We have not time to make experiments, and while we pay taxes to build up these schools and institutions, why should not we be benefited by them?

That is what we want, what we need, and what we will cheerfully pay tribute for, and as we pass along with these thoughts, we hope that these gentlemen will take notes and prepare some experiments, as they are called here, with alsike and timothy and these other kinds of grasses which have been spoken of, so we can know about them, how deep the roots will go, and other such questions so that the farmers of Wisconsin may learn such things. Now, dropping further along in our thoughts on this subject, it is better to be honest even if we expose our ignorance, we believe to-day, ladies and gentlemen, that we lack a knowledge of our own business. We feel it, and as I come down with my thoughts on this subject, I find that I am like a boat, and a small one, cast upon the wide expanse of waters with broken oars and without a rudder. I am lost in the fields of nature and I know not where to moor my little boat.

Now, drop down to the question of transmigration. Do not get alarmed, I am not going into theology. I simply want to raise the great and mooted question, which will soon be raised as to the change of grasses. That question which you have all discussed at your homes and around the corner stores, of the changing of grasses, of the change of wheat into chess, and of chess into timothy, and we come here today and we have got scientific men before us, and they tell us that there is no such a thing as a change, whilst the good, honest, hard-toiling farmer will come up and say he knows there is a change, and the question is unsettled, and yet it is written and disputed from day to day.

You go

Now, upon this question, I first start with this: to work and sow your timothy pasture, your timothy seed, seed it down with the expectation of getting good results, getting a nice pasture, or with your clover. How long will you continue with it? How long before that feed that you have sown is entirely run out, or is changed entirely to another variety of grass, with blue grass, with June grass, or white clover has taken possession of the whole of your field? Is there any arrangement of this in the God of Nature? Has he provided any arrangement by which this change takes place from day to day and is eradicating the

seed that you put down, and bringing forth another? Has He not throughout your whole field implanted the different varieties of plants? Is He not ever coloring your flowers and painting your fields with beauty, and will your Dairymen's Association pretend that you are higher authority than the Great God of Nature in the changes of Nature? Those are great questions in my mind. When you come up and say, these things are so, then we say, acknowledge the cause gentlemen, and take your place in the class.

Now, my experience has been this, for a permanent pasture. I have different varieties of land on my two hundred acre farm; I find it is part of it heavy clay, part of it black loam, and part of it marsh or peat.

I wish to say that my best success in securing a permanent pasture has been by taking off the surplus growth, the hazel brush and night shade and burr oak, in the spring of the year when the ground was full of frost; I take a mattock and sculp it off, put on some red top seed on top, and harrow it in. I have tried that on the west side of the creek.

The east side of the creek is some land that I have broken and cultivated three years, and put into pasture, and I am safe to say that the sod that never was broke produces twice the food as the sod that was broke. I believe that is the way to make a permanent pasture, to never turn the sod under, and if you do make a pasture where the sod is turned up, try and get the same side up that was up when nature made it, and I believe you will have better success with it.

Now, passing down with this change of grass, I want to give you a little experiment that I have passed through. I am unable to account for it, and if there is wisdom enough in this Association to answer it, I want it answered. I had a piece of land, about four acres, which was upon a spur of land, covered with white oak timber, and a few scattering brush. I had that all cleared out, with the exception of the white oak stumps. It was plowed in the month of October after the frost had come, it was broken at that time. Next spring it was sowed to spring wheat and raised thirty odd

bushels of good spring wheat to the acre. The next year it produced a good crop of corn, and the third year it was seeded to oats and with pure, clean timothy seed. When the oats were cut the timothy grass made its appearance as a splendid set, it was up in nice shape, thick and nice all over the field. The oats were taken off and in about four weeks from that time there was a peculiar red appearance upon the field. I went to the field and looked over it, and I found that it had grown right up through the timothy sprout what we call crow-foot, a pronged grass, three pronged, heavily seeded, all over the field, and it gave it the appearance of a sorrel patch. I called my neighbors in to examine that grass. They looked at it, examined it, and could not account for it, they thought that I had been sold, that I had bought some different seed from timothy to seed it. Well, I says, "We will let this thing stand till spring and we will see what it comes out." Nothing was turned under. In the spring that crow-foot had dropped and laid upon the ground, covered it thick all around the sprouts of timothy. The timothy was right up, the same leaflet that bore the crowfoot, right up through the same leaflet, and that was as fine. and nice a piece of timothy as ever grew on a man's land, while the crow-foot laid on the ground even till the next fall. Now, will some one account for the two varieties growing at the same time from the same seed? This was new land.

Now, following a little farther the same land, and under my own observation, that field ran for three years in pasture, when it run out into June grass and white clover, and became almost worthless for a pasture. And at the time, Mr. J. J. Smith came to our place and started a cheese factory, I thought I would recuperate that piece of pasture by sowing some plaster on it. That piece of land was sown with plaster, about seventy pounds to the acre, for that piece of blue grass and white clover in the month of April, and it sprung up immediately to red clover, and it was as nice a field of red clover as ever grew. men, that there never was a spear nor a seed of red clover

Now, I wish to say gentle