82 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



the hill this fall, after I had ploughed it, harrowed it, and 

 sowed it with rye, which was about the time of the wet spell 

 in October, there came on dry weather for a week or two, 

 and in looking over that iield I could pick out where every 

 cucumber hill had been. There was an incrustation on the 

 surface where these saline constituents of plant-food had by 

 evaporation come to the surface and formed a little incrusta- 

 tion, looking like frost, and you could look across the field 

 and distinguish where the rows of cucumbers were. The 

 year before I did the same thing with that piece. I sowed 

 it to rye, and last spring, wdien the rye started, a person 

 standin<r in the road and lookins^ across the field could see 

 where the fertilizers had been applied. In that case, there 

 was a little put in the hill and much more sowed broadcast. 



Mr. HiLLMAN. My question embodied as nearly as possi- 

 ble an exact statement of what I practised this last season, 

 only I left in the centre of the field a strip upon which 

 I sowed no chemicals. I was not able myself, and I could 

 not find a man in the neighborhood who could discover the 

 least difference between that strip upon which no chemicals 

 were sown and the remainder of the field. Now, what are 

 we to say in such a case as that ? 



Mr. Spaulding. I hardly got my question answered. I 

 want to know the profit in dollars and cents ; whether the 

 gentleman has kept an account, so that he can tell us the 

 profit, in dollars and cents, of his farming? 



Mr. Pierce. I have kept such an account. I do not 

 keep an account with every field every year, it is too labor- 

 ious a process ; but in the table of the second year's expen- 

 ses, I have figured out for each plot the cost of a bushel of 

 corn. I supiDOse the table will be published ; I cannot make 

 it intelligible to you unless it is put on the blackboard. But 

 you will find in the table that I have given the cost of a 

 bushel of corn as nearly as I could get at it. I kept an ex- 

 act account of the labor that year, and the cost per bushel of 

 the corn grown on each different plot. I have kept an ac- 

 count with corn, potatoes and cabbages. Last year I sold 

 two hundred dollars' worth of cabbages from half an acre, as 

 near as I can make out, and I kept as exact an account as I 

 could. I have uo doubt that I cleared one hundred dollars' 



