250 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



In 1883 these plats were planted with field corn in rows, 

 with four hundred pounds of fertilizers. They were planted 

 the same day, hoed the same day, the fertilizers put on the 

 same day, and the crops harvested the same day and weighed. 

 On the twentieth of an acre, the product was 235f pounds 

 of car corn per acre on one, and 233| pounds of car corn on 

 the other. You will say at once, those were duplicate plats ; 

 and if I put four hundred pounds of fertilizers upon this plat 

 in 1884, and nothing upon that one, and found an increase 

 of twenty, thirty or forty pounds upon the plat where I put 

 the fertilizers, the idea would be that that increase was pro- 

 duced by the fertilizers. But no such thing happened. 

 What I am going to state is not a single instance ; I could 

 o-ivc a dozen or more of exactly the same purport. We 

 planted potatoes upon these plats in 1884. Those potatoes 

 were planted with single eyes, cut from the same size pota- 

 toes, cut into the same basket and planted from the same 

 basket. The pieces were cut as nearly the same size as 

 practicable ; as luck would have it, they nearly all grew. 

 We had five hundred and ninety hills on this plat, and five 

 hundred and ninety-one hills on that plat; practically the 

 same,— only one hill difference. Those potatoes were har- 

 vested the same day and weighed at the same time, upon the 

 same scales. The crops on the two plats were raised under 

 precisely the same conditions. When we came to the yield, 

 we had seven hundred and twenty-eight pounds from one 

 plat, and eight hundred and twenty-six pounds from the 

 other. In other words, to be exact, we had 32.8 bushels 

 to the acre diflcrence between those two plats. Now, when 

 you find this great difference coming from some unassignable 

 cause, you sec how difficult it is to take two plats, and put 

 fertilizers on one and none on the other, and then be able to 

 say that the increase or decrease is due to the absence or 

 presence of the fertilizers. It simply shows the entire fallacy 

 of this whole system of plat experiment; for it is a fallacy, 

 as all our results go to prove. It will be seen that we have 

 got to get at our results in some other way than by this 

 simple method. In order to answer the question as to the 

 increase in the value of crops, we have got to get at our facts 

 in a roundabout way, by mathematics, by working out the 



