234 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



manure, and tliis was for the making and not the application of 

 tlie manure. 



The Hampshire Society encourages experiments, not only 

 witli compost manures, but also with guano, and the chemical 

 or mineral manures. 



These are getting into very general use, and it is of the utmost 

 importance that farmers should become acquainted witli their 

 actual value. Your committee consider that single trials of this 

 kind, while they add something to the general stock of informa- 

 tion, and bear testimony in individual instances to their value, 

 determine nothing as to their economy or tlicir permanent effect 

 on the soil. For instance ; if a single application of guano 

 (though it may produce an immediate good effect) should leave 

 the land in a worse condition than before, it may not be good 

 economy to use it. If premiums were offered for experiments 

 in these manures, to be continued for four or five years succes- 

 sively, it might load to some general conclusion as to their per- 

 manent value. 



Then, again, we want to know whether it will pay to use 

 them. There are some who stoutly deny this, and well they 

 may, when there is nothing but guessing to prove that they do 

 pay. There is nothing like careful and accurate experiment to 

 quiet all doubt in this matter. If a man has ocular demonstra- 

 tion in the half bushel, that it pays to use guano, or super-phos- 

 phate, and gives a handsome profit besides, he has something 

 that he can rely upon in his future operations ; and his experi- 

 ence may be made useful to others. 



With regard to the use of guano, there are two points partic- 

 ularly, on which much uncertainty rests, and which, it is to be 

 hoped, the inducements held out by the society, in the way of 

 premiums for experiments, may be the means of elucidating. 



One of these points involves the question whether the action 

 of guano continues more than one season : the other, whether 

 land can be kept from ultimate deterioration by this manure 

 alone. In regard to the first of these questions, we have isolated 

 facts, which go to show that its good eficcts are nut exhausted 

 in a single season. A case came imder the observation of one 

 of your committee, in which guano, applied on the ridges of 

 pease in the spring of 1855, produced before the usual time for 

 plougliing the present season, a luxuriant, spontaneous growth 



