550 ANNUAL RECORD OF SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY. 



two tons two hundred-weight No dung has been applied 

 to these plots for nearly forty years. 



"From these illustrations, it must be evident to you that 

 manures supplying nitrogen, phosphoric acid, and potash 

 will keep up the fertility of my soil, and enable it to produce 

 crops of hay, corn, and roots, in full agricultural quantity, for 

 very many years in succession. Nor is this result dependent 

 on anything exceptional in the quality of my particular soil; 

 on the contrary, I do not hesitate to give it as my opinion, 

 that cultivated soils generally, whether in Great Britain or 

 elsewhere, which have become impoverished by cropping, 

 would, in a greater or less degree, be restored to fertility by 

 the application of manure supplying, in an available condi- 

 tion, one or more of the three constituents nitrogen, phos- 

 phoric acid, and potash." 



Experience on the Farm of Mr. Prout, in England. 



In 1861, Mr. Prout bought a worn-out farm of 450 acres, 

 in Hertfordshire, twenty miles from London, improved it by 

 ditching, tillage, fallowing, etc., and began to raise grain, 

 wheat and barley, with some clover, by the use of artificial fer- 

 tilizers bone-dust, mineral superphosphate, Peruvian guano, 

 and nitrate of soda keeping no live-stock but eight horses 

 and one cow, and selling all the produce from the farm except 

 what was needed to feed these animals. He uses some 6000 

 dollars' worth of artificial fertilizers yearly, and makes a clear 

 annual profit of $4500. The firm has nearly doubled in value, 

 and there are no indications that the nine years' cropping, 

 with no return but artificial fertilizers, has in any way de- 

 teriorated the land. 



Experiment in Corn-growing hy the Sturtevant Brothers. 



The Sturtevant brothers of South Framingham, Mass., four 

 years ago set apart nine and a half acres of their farm for an 

 experiment on corn-growing with chemical fertilizers. In 

 the Scientific Farmer for November, 1878, they sum up their 

 experience as follows : 



"The field was in sod from 18*72 to 1875, and previous to 

 1872 had been cropped with corn, fodder-corn, and oats, on 

 portions. The 1874 crop of hay was scarcely half a ton per 

 acre. Two rows, seventy-two rods long, were planted the first 



