FARMS. 175 



them separately to say where the plaster began and where it 

 ended, and no one failed to point out the precise limits. The 

 crop was double that of the rest of the same piece of ground, 

 quadruple that of the preceding year. 



" It is now rendered certain, by the experience of "many, that 

 the neighborhood of the salt water forms no obstacle to its use." 

 — Agricultural Reports for 1816, vol. 4, p. 272. 



In the generations before ours, the leading farmers of this 

 country used plaster largely, and with satisfactory results. But 

 lately little attention has been paid to it, and it is difficult to find 

 men whose testimony is decisively in its favor. It is possible 

 that it deserves the praises which our predecessors bestowed 

 upon it, and that it has been supplanted by guano and other 

 new manures. If it is thought worth whife to continue its use, 

 two things should be kept in mind : first, that it will answer 

 better on dry, light or gravelly loams than on other soils ; sec- 

 ondly, that its effects must be waited for patiently, because it is 

 not soluble in less than five hundred times its weight of water. 

 Hence, if applied to grass land or pastures, it should be spread 

 in the fall or winter, that the melting snow and early rains may 

 dissolve it, and thus bring it in contact with the roots. 



On no other manure, not even guano, is there such a variety of 

 opinions concerning its operation. Nothing but numerous and 

 long continued experiments can determine the vexed questions 

 of its value and of the manner in which it produces its results. 



Farmers continue to use plaster, both in hills and as top-dress- 

 ing ; yet there are few substances employed as manure that are 

 less satisfactory. We have asked many farmers whether they 

 knew any results to follow from its use. Most of them replied, 

 none, either good or bad. Some thought it might have fixed 

 the ammonia in the manure or the atmosphere. Others had 

 reclaimed old pastures by a liberal use of plaster. In the State 

 of New York, a farmer believes that he saved his potatoes from 

 rot in 1846-7-8, by two or three liberal dressings of plaster and 

 ashes. No such result has occurred, to our knowledge, in this 

 vicinity. In parts of England it is the practice of farmers to 

 apply one hundred and fifty to two hundred weight of plaster 

 per acre to their grass lands every year. On dry, open land, in 

 a wet season, or on other land, at a greater distance from the 

 sea-shore than our county reaches, it may be found advanta- 



