No. 5. 



DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



179 



These are some of the fundamental things in soil improvement. 

 There are natural methods of building up soil that need more at- 

 tention. We have spent too much time on artificial and super- 

 ficial methods in the past. We need to talk less of percentages and 

 pounds of foreign material and look closer to Nature's methods and 

 adopt tliem. Thus will we not only enjoy life more and find more 

 profit in agriculture, but be in the way of leaving the soil better 

 than we found it. 



LIME— ITS VALUE AND DIFFERENT FORMS 



PROF. M. S. McDowell, state College, Pa. 



This question of lime has been discussed so frequently and thor- 

 oughly that T shall endeavor to confine myself to one or two phases 

 of the subject. Mr. Kester touched upon the importance of get- 

 ting nitrogen in some other way than by buying it. Some exception 

 was taken to his statement. Possibly what he had in mind may be 

 stated in a little different way. All of you are more or less familiar 

 with the general fertilizer experiment at the College. This experi- 

 ment has been in progress for 33 years. There are five plots which 

 have received no treatment during all of this time. There are four 

 plots to which an application of phosphoric acid and potash has 

 been made every other year. The rotation used has been a four-year 

 rotation consisting of corn, oats, wheat, and timothy and clover. The 

 fertilizer has been applied to the corn and to the wheat. The fol- 

 lowing table shows the yield of these four crops from the nothing 

 plots and from the phosphoric acid and pota.sh for a five-year period 

 during the later years of the experiment. 



Corn, ears, bu.shels, ... 

 Oats, grain, bushels, .. 

 Wheat, grain, bushels. 

 Hay, pounds, 



51.4 

 34.4 

 19.9 

 4469 



The object in calling attention to these figures is not so much to 

 show the value of pho.sphoric acid and potash as it is to emphasize 

 the importance of nitrogen. The fertility of the plots which have 

 received phosphoric acid and potash has been maintained through- 



