78 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



chemical manures in the same proportions stated for cu- 

 cumbers, and sow broadcast, with two hundred pounds in 

 the hill. The corn is followed by potatoes or cabbage, 

 which receive a good dressing of stable manure, seven or 

 eio;ht cords per acre, and six hundred pounds of mixed min- 

 eral fertilizers, in the drill, to be followed in the spring with 

 a dressing of three hundred pounds chemicals and seeded 

 with oats, clover and grass seed. I cannot afibrd to use my 

 stable manure on corn or grain crops, but save it for vege- 

 tables, where its mechanical action, warming and lightening 

 the soil, is of special value. 



All my chemical fertilizers, except such as are needed for 

 these small experiments, are mixed together in the barn 

 early in spring, in the proportion of two hundred pounds 

 dissolved bone-black and one hundred pounds muriate of 

 potash, and such quantities as are needed are weighed up 

 from the common pile when wanted. This mixture is such 

 as at present seems to be best adapted to my wants, but in 

 the future such changes will be made as from time to time 

 these experiments seem to indicate are needed. I cannot 

 better close this phase of my subject than by the following 

 •quotation from Prof. S. W. Johnson's report of the Connec- 

 ticut Experiment Station for 1878 : "Special manures for 

 particular crops are in fact least heard of where agriculture 

 is guided by the clearest light of science and the widest 

 range of experience." Sulphate of potash has been claimed 

 to be better for potatoes than muriate. To learn if it was 

 so, in 1879 I applied, in addition to stable manure, eight 

 pounds of sulphate of potash on a small plot of four square 

 rods, and the same quantity of muriate of potash to an ad- 

 joining plot of the same size, and got exactly the same yield 

 on each, with hardly any noticeable difference in quality. 

 Both were excellent. In these general experiments I have 

 used muriate for potatoes as well as other crops, and have 

 always grown potatoes of superior quality with it, and such 

 has been the unanimous testimony of these experiments re- 

 ported to Prof. Atwater, which seems to indicate that muri- 

 ate is, on most soils, equally as good and much cheaper. 

 Many samples of potash sold as sulphate contain large quan- 

 tities of muriate also. In two samples analyzed at the Con- 



