1882.] EXPERIMENTS WITH FERTILIZERS. 3i9 



The fertilizers were supplied, in part at cost, and in part gratui- 

 tously, by the Maj)es Formula and Peruvian Guano Co. 



It would be wrong to omit reference to the assistance rendered 

 by a fellow enthusiast in agricultural chemistry, Mr. C. V. Mapes, 

 without whose wise counsel and generous and substantial help in 

 many ways the enterprise must have been much less successful 

 than it has actually been. 



I now proceed directly to a brief statement of the results of the 

 experiments of three Connecticut farmers, Mr. W. I. Bartholemew 

 of Putnam, Mr. Charles Fairchild of Middletown, and Mr. W. 

 C. Newton of Durham. Mr. Bartholomew began, in 1877, an ex- 

 periment with corn covering a small number of plots. In 1878 he 

 undertook a special nitrogen experiment, and in 1879 another. 

 This latter and the simpler one of 1877 have been continued until 

 the present. These experiments have been in operation for five 

 years; have covered nearly one hundred plots; have been repeated 

 on the same plots with the same fertilizers and the same crop, 

 year after year, and on other parts of the same field, and on con- 

 tiguous fields and with other crops; they have been quoted in 

 more or less detail in a number of state agricultural reports and 

 elsewhere, and are decidedly the most instructive and valuable 

 ever made, to my knowledge, by a private individual in this 

 country. 



Mr. Fairchild has also been experimenting for five years, but his 

 nitrogen experiments have been in operation for only two seasons. 

 Mr. Newton's first nitrogen experiment was in 1880; also that of 

 1881 was on an adjoining portion of the same field, and on a 

 larger scale. 



In their reports the experimenters have distinguished between 

 " good" and "poor" produce, and have also given the amounts of 

 stalks and straw. Mr. Bartholomew has had between the experi- 

 mental plots intervening plots, all of which were cultivated alike — 

 the last season with potatoes fertilized with a mixture of nitrate 

 of soda, superphosphate, and potash salt — as a test of the uni- 

 formity of the soil. Lack of space compels me to omit these 

 details in the table which follows (Table 1.) I hope to give the 

 accounts in full elsewhere. 



