p.14

408

In Holland, almost the entire surface is devoted to pasture and hay,
and in that country this peculiar kind of agriculture is carried to the
greatest degree of perfection. It is a significant fact that landed property
is there of greater value and commands a higher annual rent than in any
other country.*

The relative proportion of pasture and meadow lands, as compared
with the whole amount cultivated in different countries is stated at about
one-seventh in France, one-fourth in Germany, and three-fourths in
Great Britain.

In our own country it is stated that in Seneca county, New York, the
proportion of cultivated lands devoted to grass has gradually increased
from one-eighth to one-third; ^1 and according to a very recent report, it
appears that in Ohio the whole number of acres cultivated is 11,437,692,
of which there is in grass 3,662,692 acres, or nearly one-third.

What this proportion is in other States, or in our own State, I have
not been able to ascertain with any degree of certainty.

If it should be well ascertained that land cultivated in grass is more
productive and valuable in Wisconsin, than when cropped with grain, it
may be that the partial failure of wheat a few years since, by turning
attention in this direction may, upon the whole, be a great benefit rather
than an injury to the State. The culture of grass for pasture and hay
required less manual labor, and less expensive machinery than that of
grains; and there is moreover less liability to failure of crops. Most of
the diseases by which grain is attacked are in the heads, and the weevil
or other insects usually destroy not only the culms and leaves, but the
grain itself.

There are in most of the Western States numerous natural meadows,
and low swampy grounds, the subsoil of which is the richest of any.
Most of these can easily be drained, and rendered productive of artificial
grasses with but small expense when compared with the advantages to
be gained in the land, and in increasing the healthiness of the neighborhood.

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* Loudon -- Enc. of Agriculture.

^1 See the very valuable survey of that county, by the late John Delafield, in Trans
N. Y. St. Agr. Socie y [Society], 1850, p. 502.