86 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



of its decomposition, the phosphoric acid and the potash, 

 which the corn requires ; leaving its own abundant nitrogen 

 for succeeding crops, after having supplied the corn with its 

 moderate requirements in this direction. In agriculture 

 " old things are passing away, and all things are becoming 

 new ; " and tliis old but good method of growing corn must 

 pass away, and a new but better way must come into use. 

 For we have reached the end, the maximum, of that kind of 

 corn-culture ; and, to attain our present aims, we must intro- 

 duce some improved method. This is artificial fertilizing, 

 either as a help to the old methods, or as a substitute for 

 them. It may be very convenient for a farmer, as it is for 

 me, whose chief product is milk and butter, to grow no other 

 grain than corn, and to grow no grass or hay, but only clover, 

 as a temporary help in the way of soiling cows in the sum- 

 mer-time, or to grow corn for sale instead of wheat or oats, 

 which can be grown so cheaply in the West, and cannot be 

 grown here so cheaply as corn may be. Then one cannot 

 have sod to plough under for corn always, and must grow it 

 on stubble, and often on a corn-stubble. I have grown three 

 consecutive corn-crops on the same field, and shall grow a 

 fourth next season, and expect the next crop to surpass any 

 of the three former ones. I have grown a crop equal to one 

 hundred and fifty bushels and forty-eight pounds per acre of 

 shelled corn on a potato-stubble, and one hundred and eighty- 

 nine bushels of shelled corn on two acres of oat-stubble ; so 

 that, with my new experience of late years, I look back on 

 my old experience of more than a dozen years ago as obso- 

 lete, and belonging to a past time, as indeed it must neces- 

 sarily be if we are to live by farming. For, if we cannot 

 grow corn, what shall we grow? We may and should grow 

 roots ; but our cattle cannot live by roots alone, and we should 

 have corn to sell as well as to feed, if we want. I am grow- 

 ing corn wholly by artificial fertilizing. From my first 

 experience, four years ago, with artificial fertilizers, when 

 twenty-five bushels and eight pounds of dry shelled corn was 

 measured from a plot of exactly one-sixth of an acre, I have 

 believed in artificial fertilizers. This corn was grown with 

 one hundred pounds of Mapes complete corn-manure, or at 

 the rate of six hundred pounds per acre. The one hundred 

 and eighty-nine bushels of corn were grown on a part of a 



