MANURE AND SPECIAL FERTILIZERS. 53 



duced that crop in exuberance, but which have now run 

 out, — the crops grown on those lands have taken from them 

 more of the special materials used by the crops than has been 

 returned, or than Nature has furnished. That is the way 

 with the crops here in Massachusetts. Massachusetts has 

 not a soil which will bear cropping for any length of time 

 without putting any thing on, and whatever is taken out 

 should be annually restored. Now, Professor Stockbridge has 

 shown us, by chemical analysis, that certain plants take out 

 certain things. Barnyard-manure we all know from experi- 

 ence, and it has been taught us from our earliest boyhood, will 

 produce any crop almost. If you have enough of that, you 

 can use it, and add to it, as Capt. Moore does, a special fer- 

 tilizer ; so that, if you get your onion-seed three or four deep, 

 it will throw them all up as big as j^our fist, one on the top 

 of the other. If that nine pounds of seed had not found any 

 more manure underneath it than most of us usually put in 

 the ground, he would have had a crop of small onions ; but 

 he knew, having begun with selling butter at twelve cents a 

 pound, that he had got to do something better than that. 

 He has learned that. There is the great advantage of spe- 

 cial fertilizers. I believe that every farmer can take his 

 barnyard-manure, and then, if he wants a larger crop, he can 

 afford to buy a fertilizer which contains those properties 

 which the crop requires, and which are constantly consumed 

 from year to year, and can thus make it pay. 



In the experiments I made last year, comparing the crops 

 produced by barnyard-manure with those produced by the 

 Stockbridge Fertilizer, — such crops as onions, beets, man- 

 gels, corn, and potatoes, — the advantage was always on 

 the side of the fertilizer, with one single exception. I can- 

 not state the figures here ; but you have them in the Report 

 of last year. The advantage in regard to price and in regard 

 to the amount of crop was, with one exception, in favor of 

 the fertilizer. I did not try the experiment year after year, 

 so as to know whether the effect of the fertilizer will con- 

 tinue. It was asserted last year at these meetings, that the 

 corn-crop where tliis Stockbridge Fertilizer had been put in 

 increased from year to year. I believe that was established 

 as a fact. I thought there was evidence enough to convince 

 me that that was true. Now I learn that this year it has 



