Show looking after the Pat tares the agricultural department ol 01 the na lonal government Is looking after the question of pastures more closely than ever before some of the work it has been doing during the past few years Is bound to be far reaching in its effects not only on the ranges ot the tar west but also on the pasture lands of the moie eastern sections ot the country there is no subject that it seems to the writer has been morel neglected or that will pay better pay tor thought investigation and expert ment the pastures ol 01 the american farm are badly bandied and almost al ways neglected the formation of most of our pas tures has been a hit or miss affair governed largely by accident some ot the best arable land on the farm is generally found in pasture land and that has never been disturbed since the forest was cleared away in the old days we are just now waking up to the fact that in the pastures ara great possibilities we have been sat to have a good many acres sup port a single cow we are coming now to consider how the yield of pasture grass maa be increased to enable a cow to be supported on as lew acres as possible As an index of the progress being made we recall a question that was last week put to H gurler at the dairymen s meeting at aurora illinois how many cows do you sup port per acrea the answer was that be had not yet reached the point where he could talk of it as being so many cows per acre but that it was yet so many acres to the cow but he was progressing in the direction of the inquiry the care of pastures may well con cern the department of agriculture there Is no doubt that the poor care given our pastures results in immense losses to american farmers yearly there are hundreds of millions ot acres of pasture land that are yielding results only from the upper few inches of soil with a toot of soil be ow whose richness Is untapped this Is due to the fact that so little care is given the pastures that they are al ways kept short and the roots of the grasses are prevented from striking downward the attention being given the varle ties of grasses to be grown should in a new era the one or tw grasses that are now so popular must be supplanted by a great number of grasses maturing at different periods throughout the summer there are some additional features that must be considered such as method in grazing rest and fertilization |