FARMERS' INSTITUTES. 177 



shoveling a load of sand, 75 cents a ton. I bought it and sold it by the 

 carload, and we had wonderful crops then; I could get a catch by carry- 

 ing an empty seed bag across the lot; today, I am sowing no plaster, but 1 

 have, for the last three years, lost 100 acres of seeding each year. I 

 would buy plaster, and borrow money to do it, if I thought there was any 

 particular virtue in it. I am satisfied, however, that in those years there 

 happened to be a peculiar condition of the atmosphere, by which, at that 

 particular time, the sowing of the plaster conserved the moisture and 

 started the tender little plants; in fact, I have myself repeatedly observed 

 that a single shower at the right time will save the clover in one field, 

 when the one in the next field is killed. I don't think it is a fertilizer, 

 at all. 



Q: Isn't it a fact now, that the better qualities of the plaster are 

 taken out, and that as it is now shipped it is not any good? 



A : I believe that the plaster today is just as good as twenty-five years 

 ago. 



Mr. Glidden : It has been stated that I wrote my name on a piece of 

 ground with plaster and expected to read it — thought that it would 

 appear in contrast to that without the plaster. It never did. I have 

 seen plaster on a field that was recently broken up — within the last five 

 years — and it won't show itself anywhere. Twenty-five or thirty years 

 ago the plaster did show itself, and we knew it; today, under the same 

 circumstances, it seems to have no effect, even on the new ground. It 

 is claimed that it is retained in the soil, the plaster sown in years past, 

 but why do we not see its effect on the new fields that have never had a 

 bit of plaster? One gentleman in the northern part of the State said 

 that he had not had a failure in clover in seven years. He was the 

 only man in the Institute to have a catch this last year, and he attributed 

 it to plaster. And he was the only one, I understood, who sowed plaster. 



I remember when I was a boy about ten years old, my father gave me 

 my first experience in sowing plaster, and from that time up to the 

 present, nearly every year we have sown a little. I have looked over the 

 meteorological record, and I confidently believe that where we have 

 plenty of rain, more equally distributed, as we had fifteen or twenty 

 years ago, the plaster would do more good, but I don't believe we get as 

 much benefit in these years of extreme drouth. Three or four years ago 

 we sowed a small amount, to see if there was any effect, and we could not 

 see any benefit. We tried sowing it on wheat stubble, and there, I 

 could see, after one or two rains in the fall, that the young clover in the 

 wheat stubble was better where the plaster had been sown. 



Q: Have you tried sowing it on wheat stubble? 



A: That has been my practice, and I think that the effect is good. 

 I never sow it in the spring of the year, but just as soon as I can get it on 

 after the harvest is done. We sow 100 pounds to the acre, and I haven't, 

 as a rule, failed in the seeding until last spring. Last year I seeded a 

 field of corn, seeded between the rows, and while the drouth killed it 

 everywhere else, between the corn, in the corn rows, there was as nice 

 clover as you would care to see. About twenty years ago, I rented a 

 farm, and the man I rented of furnished the plaster. He furnished from 

 three to five tons of plaster, and I could see no good from it and told him 

 so. 



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