EXPERIMENT STATION. 55 



This Marine Mud, compared with stable manure is as rich or 

 richer in lime, magnesia, potash, soda and sulphuric acid. It con- 

 tains but one-third as much nitrogen and is quite deficient in phos- 

 phoric acid. It would serve admirably to use in connection with 

 "fish manures, which supply little besides nitrogen and phosphates. 



Mr. Foote writes as follows regarding this mud : — 



" The mud is washed into a small bay between Sachem's Head 

 and Mulberry Point ; and is flooded at every tide. I have had 

 fifteen years' experience with it on light-textured though dark- 

 colored loam with a clayish subsoil or underlaid by rock. It 

 should be dug in winter ; the action of the frost pulverizes it till 

 it is like ashes. It is then left to dry a month or so. If dug in 

 summer it bakes hard. I cart it to fields from twenty rods to 

 half a mile distant. It costs two cents a bushel dumped on the 

 field ready to spread. I use from 800 to 1000 bushels per acre, 

 in drills and in hills, broadcast on pasture or spread and plowed 

 in. When I used 2000 bush, mud to the acre I raised potatoes at 

 the rate of 400 bush. One cart load was accidentally spread 

 upon a space about 15 feet square and plowed in, and a very large 

 crop was the result; from one hill I took 13 potatoes (all there 

 were) which weighed 6^ lbs. With corn I tried alternate rows 

 of mud and yard-manure; the latter from a yard of twenty cows 

 where 1100 bush, of grain had been fed in the winter. Early in 

 the season the mud rows did not show as well as the other ; later 

 they caught up and were equal in results to the other, in size of 

 stalk and amount of grain. 



In good corn years I have had 100 bush, of shelled corn to the 

 acre with mud alone ; but the general average is 75 bush. This 

 last year of late drouth, the best corn was on the driest land with 

 mud. With wheat this year I used bai-n-yard, hog-pen, and mud 

 manure with an average croj) of 25 bush, per acre to all three. 

 With rye I do not find it successful, though others do who have 

 used it on sandier soil. Of English hay I have 3 tons per acre 

 where nothing but mud has been used for years. 



Top-dressing pastures once in three years keeps them in fine 

 grass and apparently would do so forever. X do not find it quick 

 enough for an early vegetable garden, without some other more 

 heating manure. With beets I have raised 900 to 1000 bush, per 

 acre." 



