10 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



constituent elements. We shall have to examine the plants we 

 would grow in it, in the same way, and learn of what they are 

 composed. Then we must make such combinations and appli- 

 cations as will " tickle the earth and make it laugh with a 

 harvest." 



" What do you mix your colors with ? " inquired one poor 

 artist of a more successful brother. " Brains," said he. And 

 that is the very article we shall very much need in all our future 

 operations in the high art of agriculture. 



ENGLISH EXPERIMENTS. 



There are several private gentlemen in England, fortunately 

 possessed of means and disposition, who are making experiments 

 in the interest of agriculture, which are worthy your attention.* 



I refer to the experiments of Mr. Laws of Rothamsted, which 

 have been conducted at his own cost for seventeen years, and 

 developed results of great interest and value. They have upset 

 one notion which we thought was established, viz. : that a crop 

 grown year after year in the same place would diminish gradu- 

 ally, and finally run out. He has grown wheat seventeen years 

 upon the same plat of ground without manure, the report says 

 " unmanured," and produced from it an average of 14| bush- 

 els per acre, — a larger average than the wheat crop of the Western 

 States. ' The largest average production was 36|- bushels per 

 acre, and this not from the use of any single fertilizer, but from 

 several in combination, of which the principal ingredient was 

 nitrate of soda. This article was found to be of especial benefit 

 to grass, more than trebling the product — increasing it from 

 one to three tons per acre. The soil, it should be observed, at 

 this place is a " somewhat heavy loam, with a subsoil of raw 

 yellowish red clay, but resting in its turn upon chalk, which 

 produces good natural drainage." The tabulated results of 

 these experiments are very voluminous, and while we cannot of 

 course deduce from them any certain rules that will be appli- 

 cable to all farms, yet they must stand as a fruitful source of 

 practical information. The results are briefly and beautifully 

 exhibited with reference to wheat, on a tablet now standing 

 against one of the walls of the new building devoted to agricul- 



* See table on next page. 



