DAIRY, SEED IMPROVEMENT, STOCK BREEDERS MEETINGS. 319 



acreage proposition handled according to the usual method pur- 

 sued by the regulation farmer. As Long Island potatoes sold 

 that year from 85 cents to $1.15 per bushel and, as all these 17 

 varieties sold for identically the same price, even the most 

 thoughtless or the most shiftless will readily grasp the fact that 

 there is a heap of money to be made in trying out varieties 

 and then selecting seed for planting from the very best there 

 is in the field. Corn showed on acre tests to run all the way 

 from 42 bushels to the acre up to 175. Wheat, from 36 bushels 

 to 51. Each and every one of these tests were made with seed 

 purchased from well-known seedhouses and in practically every 

 case, varieties, claimed to be the best ever, were selected. The 

 methods pursued were identical in every case and followed the 

 simple practices w'hich proved so successful when used by the 

 early settlers in each and every state of our great republic. 



Here is the exact outline of method pursued. Acreage on 

 which a cover crop of rye and vetch or crimson clover had 

 held the rains of fall and spring and the snows of winter, and 

 also held that tremendously valuable fertility found in top 

 soils and which is annually blown out to sea or into the big 

 woods, if winter's winds are allowed to sweep across bare 

 fields, was first cut up with a rotary or disc harrow, cut north 

 and south and east and west, in order to cut out the slabs so 

 many farmers place in the bottom of their furrows and then 

 wonder why their crops do poorly. After thorough discing we 

 plow deep. Not the deep that so many eastern farmers mean, 

 but the deep of the big crop regions of the west. Instead of 

 four or four and one-half inches, we try for nine inches, and 

 are not satisfied if we do not get at least seven and one-half 

 inches. We have now laid in the bottom of our furrow well- 

 broken-up soil filled with vegetable matter in the finest kind 

 of condition to let the sub-soil moisture come through and to 

 hold future rainfall. We further have started the finest kind 

 of a chemical laboratory which works without watching, for 

 this clover, this rye, this vetdh and the roots thereof rot slowly 

 and continuously, and the gases given off put in fine shape and 

 ready for immediate use of the crop the immense amounts of 

 potash, phosphates and other health giving mineral matters 

 contained in all soils, but locked up and out of reach of our 

 crop until something rots, either vegetable or animal matter, 



