No. 6. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 491 



The soil is a slatey shale underlaid by a clayey sub-soil aud in three 

 of the fields by hard[)an, which in its turn is underlaid by a sandy 

 gravel. One of the hard pan-fields I tiledrai«ed at very considerable 

 expense, which great outlay deterred me from applying this expen- 

 sive remedy to the oth(>rs. You will see later what effect my method 

 of renovation has had on these two fields which remained without 

 tile drains. 



The first spring I took in hand four of the seven fields, putting two 

 in potatoes and two in early corn, all with a generous application of 

 fertilizer. I may here say that I coiisider fertilizers as only a means 

 to the end and that end is to be able to do without them. The 

 crops realized were not great, but still paid fairly for the investment. 

 Just as soon as the crops were gathered during late summer and 

 fall these fields w-ere plowed and sowed to rjc. I used rye because 

 I then knew of no other plant which could be grown for my purpose 

 at that time of year. The rye, having been sown reasonably early 

 and finding, I supposed, some of the unused fertilizer as food, grew 

 well and was plowed under the next spring at various stages of 

 growth and all four fields again put in crops, the two potato fields 

 being put to corn and the two corn fields to potatoes, using a re- 

 duced amount of fertilizer. The other three fields were plowed and 

 planted that spring, two with corn and one with potatoes and the 

 same process of sowiuig and plowing in rye was follow^ed that fall 

 and the next spring. 



The agricultural press of the time began to tell us of the great 

 work crimson clover was doing in the reclaiming of soils in Vir- 

 ginia and Maryland, but no one in my latitude then supposed that 

 it could be grown successfullv much above the Mason and Dixon 

 line, and that we should ever be able to use it for the purpose of 

 drawing the free nitrogen of our atmosphere from the boundless 

 sky and store it in the shape of globules on its roots for the suste- 

 nance of crops to follow, besides givi«ig us in its rapid and I may 

 say rank growth the largest quantity of that humus we so much 

 needed. Of cow peas 1 knew nothing nor did I then know of 

 an early variety of soja beans, which has been introduced since. 

 So the rye was all I had and I considered that it was 

 not till 1893 or '94, I think, ihat at a farmers institute in Lackawanna 

 county I heard Mr. George Powell, of Ghent, N. Y., tell of his success 

 in growing crimson clover more than a hundred and fifty miles north 

 of my county (Monroe). I at once concluded that if he could 

 grow it I could, and in July of that year I sowed it in my corn fields. 

 This first attempt proved a failure for two reasons: The one was 

 the fact that I had sown it on top of the freshly stirred soil at the 

 last cultivation of corn and the other I have ever since thought 

 was that I obtained Maryland seed, or in other words, seed wijich 

 bad not been properly acclimate^r 



