APPLICATION OF MANURES. 83 



risk of loss, if you put your manure on the top of a piece of 

 land in the fall. If there comes a hea^y rain, you will find 

 puddles there, and the water will be impregnated with the 

 manure. If that is not so, will you tell why the lowlands 

 are richer than the uplands ? 



Dr. Stuktev^vxt. The wash from the uplands deposits 

 fine mud, a clay-like substance called " silt," in the lowlands, 

 and makes them richer. 



Capt. MooEE. There is not a farmer in this room who 

 has not seen the water by the side of the road discolored 

 by the wash from coarse, crude manure applied in the fall. 

 It seems utterly absurd to me to say that no wash comes 

 from manure when applied in the fall. I may be all wrong ; 

 I may be thick-headed : but I believe you will convert your 

 manure into plant-food quicker, and make it more available 

 for the plant that is going to take it up, by applying it in the 

 spring than if it is applied in the fall. 



Mr. "Whitaker. There is one thing that Capt. Moore 

 has called attention to in reference to the advantasre of turn- 

 ing over the sod in May as compared with turning it over 

 late in the fall. He says that we get more available food for 

 the plant from sod ploughed in ]\Iay than we do from sod 

 ploughed late in the fall. Probably there is a great difference 

 in the meaning of the term " late in the fall." Last Decem- 

 ber, after I had been over to the Waltham meeting, I went 

 home and ploughed under part* of a piece of sod-land upon 

 which I was going to plant some fodder-corn early in the 

 spring. Tlie latter part of April or the early part of May I 

 ploughed under the other part. I manured both lots alike : 

 they lay contiguous to each other. I planted my seed for fod- 

 der-corn, and the results were not good on the part that was 

 ploughed in December. I made up my mind I would not do 

 it again. On that part which I ploughed in May I planted 

 fodder-corn after I was at Dr. Sturtevant's meeting, which 

 was held, I believe, on the eighteenth day of July. I went 

 home and planted more corn on that (I had planted some 

 previously), and that was the best success I ever had wdth 

 fodder-corn. But not to be beaten out of it because I had 

 made a mistake in December, and got a poor crop of fod' 

 der-corn in June, I ploughed that up, put on a little more 

 manure, and sowed with barley, and on the fourth day of 



