42 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan., 



much, should / use? What special fertilizers, if any, should I 

 apply ? Mr. Lawes gives expression to a recognition of this fact 

 in 1881, in his pamphlet on "Fertility," where in contrasting the 

 interest in the science of agriculture in the United States, with 

 that existent in England, he writes of "the comparative indifier- 

 ence to the subject which prevails " in England. I dislike even 

 to seem to criticise the work at Rothamstead, so beneficent has it 

 been to agricultural science, but I cannot fail to see the many 

 almost insurmountable difficulties that exist, towards determining 

 by field experiment, results that can be acceptable by the farmer, 

 under a system which seems to confound the duties of discovery 

 with that of verification. 



One remark more upon the Rothamstead field experiments. 

 There is a practical skill in farming here shown, which adds con- 

 fidence to such deductions as these field experiments offer. On 

 land not "naturally of great fertility, crops of 13 bushels of wheat 

 have been raised annually for twenty-eight years without any 

 manurial application, and with farm-yard manure 48 bushels 

 annually for a like period, or almost double the average produc- 

 tion in Britain. 



What shall we say in contrast of the claims of Professor 

 Atwater for the Bartholomew series of four years' experiment 

 with corn, as " decidedly the most instructive and valuable ever 

 made to my knowledge by a private individual in this country," 

 where on land which produced forty bushels of oats one year, but 

 6.2 calculated bushels of poor corn were raised the next year, 

 followed by 3 bushels, a failure, and 13.5 bushels? Where in 

 1880, "the season of 1880 was unusually favorable,'' the application 

 of IG cartloads of hog-manure was followed by only 37.7 calcu- 

 lated bushels of crop ? Where 5 1 lbs. of phosphoric acid produced 

 41.6 calculated bushels, 25^ lbs. of phosphoric acid produced 38 bush- 

 els, and 17 lbs. of phosphoric acid produced 33.5 bushels of corn ? 

 Where no duplicate plots were used to test accuracy ? Where the 

 variations of yield between the differently treated crops were no 

 more than could be reasonably expected in a common field, each 

 sixteenth of an acre being harvested separately for a comparison ? 

 Where the fertilizer used was not analyzed, nor the crop estimated 

 free from moisture, nor observations recorded during the growth ? 

 Where the cultivation was so poor, that the no-manure plot of the 

 first year is said to have produced only " very poor and green " 

 ears ? It is quite evident that in Mr. Bartholomew's experiment 



