No. 7. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 415 



DR. FEEAR: About $6.50 on the average. " 



MR. WING: We have the advantage of you in Ohio. We can get 

 it on oars at |1. I have thought, though, that it is like throwing 

 away money to put six, eight or ten tons of lime on the land to pre- 

 pare it to grow alfalfa. Several years ago when I was in England 

 and France I saw the deep pits from which the lime had been taken, 

 and saw the trees banked up with it, and I asked Mr. Yates what 

 those pits were. He told me that was where they had taken out the 

 lime to grow clover. Nothing in the world is better for this purpose 

 than lime. 



DR. FREAR: The carbonates, but not the slaked lime. 



.MR. WING: I never saw such clover as they grew there, and as 

 the clover is a good preparation for the alfalfa, I thought that if 

 crushed limestone would do this, it would be a safe investment at a 

 dollar. 



The CHAIRMAN: Anything further? 



MR. HARGETT: I am a stranger here, and did not hear all that 

 was said. May ] ask whether the question refers to ground lime- 

 stone or some other particular form of it? 



DR. FREAR: Just the rock. 



MR. HARGETT: Our experience in Maryland has been thai burn- 

 ing the rock is the best way to apply it. 



DR. FREAR: In 1859 the whole of the College Farm was thor- 

 oughly limed, and now, after a period of about forty years, we find 

 that here and there further applications will be necessary. Had this 

 lime been put on in the form of carbonate of lime, rather than in 

 the form of a caustic, the effect would have been complete in a very 

 short space of time. 



MR. WING: May I ask for further information regarding the plots 

 you have at your college? I was interested in your reference to 

 them. You gave the figures for twenty years, did you not? 



DR. FREAR: In my paper today I gave the figures for twenty 

 years; it is now in its twenty-seventh year. 



MR. WING: 1 did not have the figures and therefore did not know. 

 In Kentucky and Tennesse the soil rests upon a very hard limestone, 

 and therefore the people there have presumed that they did not 

 need this lime; but, I suppose, the world has been leaching for six 

 thousand years and they are now feeling the need of it, and I have 

 discovered that where they have begun to use the limestone, the 

 growth of the crops has been doubled in a few years. 



MR. STOUT: I would like to ask the Doctor whether this lime- 

 stone that is being sold throughout the country as high as |20 per 

 ton has any advantage over the ordinary crushed rock? 



