260 STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



stalks, but have you ever tested the matter to see if you get more corn?"' 

 " No." '' Well what you want is not the ilauntiug frushy stalks, but the solid 

 golden-eared corn. Try the very simple experiment of taking alternate strips 

 in your cornfield, and apply to one set plaster, and leave the other without 

 plaster, and then test the results in your corn-basket or by the scales, and not by 

 your eye. Get your neighbors to make the same experiment, and then compare 

 results, and let us know something of what plaster does for corn. Now you 

 can find learned jorofessors who wall demonstrate to you that an experiment so 

 loosely contrived as this will never prove anything — that an experiment that 

 does not prove anything to a mathematical demonstration is good for nothing. 

 Well, if we must wait for experiments in agriculture that will be mathematical 

 demonstrations, we must wait a long time — for example, till expansion of the 

 currency shall bring us to a specie basis ! Agriculture at the best is a science 

 of proliabilities. We seek to make the probabilities as strong as possible by 

 excluding all known sources of error, and by multiplying the experiments seek 

 to exclude unknown sources of error. We may never reach demonstrations of 

 mathematical exactness, but we reach the same class of probabilities uj)on 

 which w^e risk safety and life from new years chime to old year's death. 



I learn from the newspapers that a farmers' club of Van Buren county tried 

 this exjierimeut with corn, each farmer cultivating his field in alternate strips, 

 with and Avithout plaster ; at the end of the year each farmer tested the result 

 by his basket, and theii they all came together to conqmre results, when they 

 concluded that no increase of corn Avas secured by plaster. It may be that this 

 was an erroneous conclusion ; but is it not time to know whether we are Avast- 

 ing plaster, and if so, stop the Avaste ? I say waste, because plaster applied to 

 any crop Avithout benefit to that crop, is practically Avasted, because much of it 

 Avill be Avashed out of the soil and lost before another crop is groAvn on that 

 field. You may say that loss is small for each farmer, but Avhen you multiply 

 the loss by all the farmers in tlie State, the loss mounts up to startling thous- 

 ands of dollars. I consider it a question of great financial importance to the 

 farmers of our State to determine what crops are really benefited by plaster. 

 By having a very large number of persons engage in this examination on a 

 great vaa'iety of soils and under different climatic conditions, Ave exclude a great 

 many sources of error, and reach results of greatly increased value. A State 

 that annually uses half a million dollars' Avorth of plaster should know Avhat she 

 gets for her money. 



Many persons liaA'e questioned the value of plaster as a manure because it does 

 not under all circumstances benefit crops, and the Ioav estimate in Avhich it is 

 held in the British Islands is quoted as proof of its small value. But if Ave 

 claimed that a substance could have no manural value unless it was beneficial 

 under all circumstances, aa'C might deny the manural value of every substance. 

 A manure is of value Avhen it supplies, directly or indirectly, some material 

 which is not present in sufficient quantity or in available form to comjiletely 

 supply the Avants of any given crop. 



If the soil contains abundance of any giA'en substance, the further application 

 of that material may not benefit the crop. Sir Humphrey Davy examined some 

 English soils and found they contained one per cent, of sulphate of lime. This 

 may seem a small amount at first sight, but when Ave remember that an acre of 

 soil taken to the depth of twelve inches is estimated to Aveigh 4,000,000 lbs., Ave 

 see that the one per cent, signifies the presence of twenty tons of plaster in each 

 acre, A\diich Avould be an enormous manuring. When a soil already contains 



