THE EXPERIMENT STATION. 79 



Fertilizers Used. 



The investigation of the capabilities of this soil was conducted entirely 

 on the basis of practical utility — to answer the question whether a man with 

 limited means, and unable to buy costly fertilizers, could hope to make a 

 satisfactory farm on the plains. The use of barn-yard manures was rejected 

 for two good reasons: Because it had been already fully demonstrated that 

 large crops could be grown on the sands with a free use of barn-yard manure, 

 and in the second place the supply of such manure was too limited for the 

 vast area to be occupied. For similar reasons commercial fertilizers were not 

 used in these experiments. It would be easy by the free use of any or all 

 these materials to obtain surprising crops, and astonish the public with a 

 display of crops from the barren sands, but for the settlement of the 

 real problem of the sands, such displays would be as useless as they are 

 surprising. 



In like manner, by selecting some unusual soil for experimenting — a 

 beaver meadow or river bottom, where the accumulation of plant food and 

 the supply of soil moisture were exceptional — the crops would outstrip all 

 that could be shown on the characteristic sands of the pine barrens. 



Such results and displays are very good for the county fair and the office of 

 the local newspaper, "to show what our county can produce," but they are 

 very far. from solving the real problem of the plains. For this purpose a fairly 

 representative soil must be chosen, the conditions of climate and exposure 

 such as prevail in the region, and the fertilizers such as are within the 

 means of farmers of limited means who would make their homes on these 

 cheap lands. 



For these reasons three manurial substances have been selected for 

 these experiments, viz., marl, plaster and salt. These are all very cheap 

 materials. The marl, or bog lime, a mixture of carbonates of lime and 

 magnesia with a varying amount of sand and clay, and usually contain- 

 ing a small amount of phosphate of lime, is found in such quantities in the 

 small lakes and bogs of this region that the expense of getting out and onto 

 the land is practically all the expense of using it, the first cost of the mate- 

 rial in its bed being nothing. As found in the lakes, the soft quality of the 

 marl and its tendency, when disturbed, to run into a slimy mass, makes 

 the effort to shovel it out difficult. The tendency to assume a semi-fluid 

 character when stirred in water, might be taken advantage of to pump it up 

 into a trough or pipe and let it run off to a platform on dry land, where the 

 excess of water would flow or drain away and leave the marl in good condi- 

 tion for hauling in a few weeks or months at the most. A belt with attached 

 buckets, such as used for elevating wheat, might be mounted on a scow, the 

 lower end of the bucket pump being sunk into the marl bed and capable of 

 being moved about into a fresh position as the marl is exhausted by pump- 

 ing, the buckets discharging into a hopper to carry the semi-fluid marl by a 

 trough to bed with porous sand for a bottom, through whicn the water may 

 d*ain away — some such arrangement to be worked by horse-power, or by 

 hand, might carry the marl to accessible points. If left all winter to freeze 

 and dry it would be in good condition for use in the spring. It is hoped to 

 rig and put to use such marl pump at Grayling in the Dear future. 



These three materials, marl, plaster and salt, are the only manures used on 

 this experimental farm. The marl when used in doses of five tons to the acre 



