FERTILIZATION. 145 



acre for that seven dollars, unless the roots are so thick as 

 to crowd one another. If the roots become thick and crowd 

 one another out, it is better to turn them over. It is folly 

 to undertake to top-dress such grass land either with manure 

 or with fertilizers. I have a very large amount of land 

 under-drained. I have twenty-six thousand feet of under- 

 draining, and where it is a vegetable bottom in one cultiva- 

 tion you cannot get down to the water-grass, — you cannot 

 get the sour out of it. In about three years you will find 

 the water-grass coming back, if you cultivate it but one year. 

 It will require two or three times turning over before you 

 get it so that it will hold timothy ; the water-grass will 

 crowd it out. I use about seven or eight hundred cords of 

 night-soil in addition to the manure I have mentioned. I 

 plough that under deep, and I do not calculate to grow an 

 acre of grass unless it will produce two tons to the acre the 

 first mowing. When it yields anything less than that I will 

 turn it over. But if I had no other means of fertilizing, I 

 should not go to the cities to buy manure and haul it home, 

 costing me ten dollars a cord, to put on the land. I think it 

 is much cheaper to buy the fertilizers to which I have re- 

 ferred. I think if the people in a town would club together 

 and buy their fertilizer in ten-ton lots and mix it themselves, 

 it would be much cheaper than to buy stable manure. You 

 can buy " Vielle on Manure "and get a formula there for 

 almost any crop, and you would save from twenty-five to 

 thirty per cent. 



I hardly think that if you put on but seven cords to the 

 acre, it would be practicable to run ordinary land over four 

 years. It might be on some ground that was more retentive ; 

 say, for instance, a close subsoil, made of marl or of clay. 

 Marl will hold water as well as clay ; and that marl or clay, 

 coming up within twelve or nine inches of the top, will hold 

 your grass two years longer than ordinary land where there 

 is no close bottom to it. On under-drained black land, con- 

 taining a good deal of vegetable matter, you will find that a 

 dry season affects it very much. I cannot say why it is, 

 unless it is that the character of the soil draws the sun and 

 dries it up, but I find that I cannot raise a great many things 

 on this black soil after it becomes very dry, especially 



