MANURES. 169 



Now these ftirmers will average as many as five acres each 

 in vegetable crops, and their average application of manure 

 is certainly as high as from eight to ten cords to the acre. 



It will be seen, then, that while the average use of barn- 

 yard manure is less than ten cords each by the farmers of 

 Marblehead, the average quantity of manure used by them is 

 forty cords or more. We find here, then, a community which, 

 in refutation of the old axiom, that barn-yard manure lies at 

 the basis of successful agriculture, have for twenty years kept 

 their soil in the highest state of fertility with but little depend- 

 ence upon it, while they are known by their crops far and 

 wide as successful farmers. How they have accomplished 

 this, what plant-food they use as a substitute, and how they 

 prepare it for the soil, does not come within the sphere of my 

 article, and I will therefore pass on to give a single illustra- 

 tion from m}^ own experience of how a large crop of cabbages 

 were successfully raised without any help from barn-manure. 



In the spring of 1874, I broke up in an old pasture, wher- 

 ever I could find sufficient depth of soil among the ledges, 

 about three acres of rough hilltop and sides. As the road 

 up the hill was very steep, making the teaming of common 

 compost a very difiicult matter, while six hundred cords on 

 various fields of tillao;e had about exhausted all resources in 

 that direction, I was more than half compelled to use concen- 

 trated fertilizers as a substitute. I chose hen-manure, ground 

 bone, and German potash salts. The hen-manure was col- 

 lected in town at a dollar .a barrel, the bone was a part of 

 about thirty tons of bones that had laid together until about 

 rotten, and were then ground in a bark mill. These I pur- 

 chased at from $20 to $25 per ton. They had been offered 

 in neighboring towns in large or small lots, and yet there 

 were found but two purchasers sufiiciently intelligent or 

 enterprising to invest in them at this low figure ! Dr. Loring 

 was one of these ; the name of the other gentleman I have 

 foro-otten. The condition of the bones was so coarse, that 

 probably the word crushed would best define it. The potash 

 salts used were of the cheapest variety, known by the name 

 of kaiuite, which contained but a minimum of potash to a 

 maximum of chloride of sodium, or common salt ; a subse- 

 quent analysis proving that the composition as given was 



22* 



