120 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



that skillful farming is rather showD in the condition of the 

 soil than in the magnitude of the crops removed. The power 

 of future production ought never to be sacrificed for tem- 

 porary gain. 



The hog-pen is another source of fertility for the fann. 

 However cheap pork may be in the market, the hog will pay 

 for his keeping if you will supply him with sufficient material 

 to work into rich dressing. The hen-house affords a supply 

 of domestic guano equal to any that has been manipulated by 

 dealers in commercial fertilizers. A single bushel of the 

 droppings of fowls, properly composted with loam or muck, 

 will furnish what is equivalent to a cart load of ordinary 

 dressing. Thousands of bushels of wood ashes are annually 

 sold out of the county of Aroostook to go to enrich the fields 

 of the older settled parts of our State, and some are shipped 

 to Connecticut and New Jersey. The owners of those old 

 farms can aflbrd to buy them and pay for the transportation. 

 Can the farmers of this county afford to sell them? Each 

 bushel of hard wood ashes contains four pounds of potash, 

 worth seven cents a pound, and this is not half of the valua- 

 ble properties, for two bushels of leached ashes are worth 

 more than one bushel of the unleached. Ashes contain the 

 most valuable material of the commercial fertilizers, and if 

 these elements are purchased in any other form, they w^ill 

 cost more than the former receives when he sells them. 



The bones of animals are rich in phosphates and nitrogen, 

 but they are too often left about the premises to lie bleaching 

 in the sun and rain. "Can these dry bones live?" Yes, in 

 new created forms of beauty and utility. By grinding them 

 to powder, or treating them with sulphuric acid, the}^ may 

 speedily be decomposed ; or they will more slowly be digested 

 if kept in a barrel with moistened ashes. Buried in the 

 ground, it will be many years before they can be disinte- 

 grated and made to yield up their rich plant food. Almost 

 every farmer is careless in this which is most essential to 

 success, and allows much matter that properly l^elongs to the 

 compost heap, to go to waste every year. Substances are 



