326 BOARD OP AGRICULTURE. 



know what our soil is ? We scarcely know anything about our soil, 

 and this being- so, how can we make scientific experiments ? 



But as the gentleman from Penobscot (Mr, Hamlin) says, if we 

 cannot make scientific experiments, we may make practical ones, 

 that will be of use to ourselves. If we pursue an experiment 

 upon our own farms, year after year, and find it successful, no 

 matter what the constitution of the soil is, we may venture to say 

 then that we have tried an experirnent, and know that nature 

 answers " Yes ;" that is to say, if we succeed- in raising crops as 

 we hope to raise them. I do not know but it is just as proper, 

 if we fail every time, to say that nature has given us an answer. 

 If we try half a dozen times to raise corn upon a piece of land, 

 and fail, we might as well admit that nature says " No " to that, 

 and try some other spot, or tiy some other method, or some other 

 manure. I have been rather a dabbler in experiments, and my 

 neighbors have laughed at me sometimes for it. This very sum- 

 mer, they caught me weighing, some potatoes. I saw them smile, 

 but I was not at all disturbed, for I ascertained in that way that 

 there was a difi'erence of fifty per cent, in the result of diflerent 

 kinds of manure that I had used upon the same ground. Yet I 

 have thought since that I may have been mistaken in regard to 

 that very experiment. I labored very carefully, and thought I 

 knew everythiug about it. But I dumped the diflerent manures 

 upon the ground, and, query, did not rain come, and if so, did not 

 the land under these piles of manure get more than its proportion? 

 If not, did my boys spread that manure so that every foot of 

 ground got its due proportion On the whole, I have but little 

 faith in the results of that experiment. I thought I was doing 

 the best 1 could, but really I don't think it amounts to much. 

 And yet, if I were to pursue that same series of experiments half 

 a dozen years, and the same answers came from the same manures 

 every time, I should believe that the experiments were worth 

 something. 



There is a great deal of truth in what has been remarked here, 

 that few of us have the time, few of us have the money that we 

 can afford to spend, and few of us really have the ability to give 

 proper attention, and notice carefully and correctly the answer 

 that is given. I must say with regard to that, that it is very 

 much as it is with stock breeding. A man who does not love an 

 animal is doing a foolish thing if he undertakes to raise stock ; 

 and the farmer who undertakes to make experiments must have a 



