202 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



submit the question to the only party who will give you an answer 

 to be depended upon, — and I pledge my word that you will not be 

 charged an extravagant fee for the opinion. Lay the case before 

 your own soils, and your own crops. Put some gypsum on your 

 land and then put on the crops, and in autumn listen for the 

 answer. You need not use much ; — half a dozen quarts, on as 

 many different square rods, in various parts of your farm, will 

 give as distinct replies, as would the same number of tons on as 

 many ten acre lots. 



There are wide breadths of land where gypsum will cause an 

 abundant growth of clover ; — and with clover you can so manure 

 land as to produce good crops of corn, or wheat, or grass. If you 

 have such land, be sure not to stint the application of gypsum and 

 clover seed. 



Bones. The value of these depend largely on the phosphoric 

 acid they contain, and which amounts on an average to twenty- 

 three per cent., or nearly a fourth part of their weight. It exists 

 mostly in combination with lime, (as tribasic phosphate), a very 

 little also with magnesia. Besides this earthy phosphate, bones 

 have animal matter, containing nitrogen, enough to yield five to six 

 per cent, of their weight of ammonia upon decomposition. Bones, 

 for the most part, are very tough, and require powerful machinery 

 to reduce them to fineness. This is necessary if we desire early 

 returns from their application, for a bit of hard bone weighing a 

 quarter of an ounce will last ten or twenty years in the soil, before 

 being fully decayed. 



The phosphate in bones is of the kind usually called insoluble 

 (i. e. tribasic), but it exists in particles so very minute as to be 

 invisible, singly, to the naked eye. These are glued each to its 

 neighbors by the anfmal matter. As the animal matter decays in 

 the ground the molecules of phosphate fall apart, and so extremely 

 fine are they as to be slowly yet sufiiciently soluble. Hence it is, 

 that bone dust can often be used to advantage without being first 

 treated with acid. 



Some farmers are beyond reach of a bone mill. Such may, if 

 they will, utilize bones in the following manner : Break them as 

 small as possible, at odd jobs and leisure times ; mix with un- 

 leached ashes, and wet the mass. If possible, warm it also, which 

 is easiest done by the heat of fermenting dung. The combined 

 action of heat, moisture and caustic alkali causes the animal 

 matter to give way, and the atoms of phosphate fall apart in a 



