Il6 MISSOURI AGRICULTURAL REPORT. 



manure. In other words, the increase per acre is larger from the larger 

 application of manure, but the increase per ton of manure is larger from 

 the smaller one ; hence, when the manure supply is scanty it is advisable 

 to spread it more thinly than when it is abundant, but table XII shows 

 that one ton of manure treated with phosphate rock and taken directly 

 from the stable to the field may produce a greater increase than two 

 tons of the yard manure used in the experiment just described. 



In conclusion : My study of the soil has led me to the belief that the 

 plants we cultivate have but Uttle greater ability to obtain ' mineral sub- 

 stances required for their growth directly from the sand and clay of the 

 soil than they have to obtain their nitrogen directly from the free nitro- 

 gen of the atmosphere, but that, in the one case as in the other, their 

 supplies are chiefly drawn from stores accumulated and made available 

 through the agency of microscopic organisms existing in the soil, and 

 whose work has been going on for countless ages. 



Our statistics of crop production show that the average agricultural 

 practice of our time is tending toward the steady exhaustion of this 

 accumulated store of fertility, while experimental data show that it is 

 possible to secure a very much larger average yield than that ordinarily 

 secured, and that this may be accomplished at a lower relative cost than 

 is now required to produce the average crop. 



These data also show that, while it is possible to bring up the rate 

 of production of a run-down soil to a point exceeding that of its virgin 

 condition by the intelligent use of chemical fertilizers, and to do this at 

 a cost which will leave a margin of profit, yet the same result may be 

 attained more certainly and at a very much smaller cost by the production 

 and well informed use of animal manures, re-enforced with such fertili- 

 zing materials as may be required to more perfectly adapt these manures 

 to the soils on which they are employed. 



DISCUSSION. 



Gov- Colman: Do you believe that lime is an antidote for what is 

 termed throughout Ohio "clover sickness?" 



Mr. Thorne: Yes, it is. 



Mr. Wilhite : We have some land in this country where clover will 

 not grow. 



Mr. Thorne: What kind of land is it? 



Dr. Waters: It is free stone land — the thinner lime-stone land 

 that has been cultivated for a long time. 



Mr. Thorne : That land has been stirred up and the surface turned 

 over and over again and the lime has been pumped out by hard rotations 



