69 . . 



The manure of farm-animals is seen to be tbe main reliance for sus- 

 taining fertility. Commercial fertilizers — organic and mineral — are 

 somewliat in use in New England, especially in Maine and Massachu- 

 setts, including quantities of fish-refuse and sea-weed. They are also 

 used sparingly in the Middle States ; but the cheaper minerals, lime and 

 plaster, and still cheaper green-manuring, monopolize a large proportion 

 of the percentages credited to " other fertilizers." The South Atlantic 

 States from Marylantl to Georgia, inclusive, use not only the largest 

 proportion of manipulated fertilizers, but the largest quantity in com- 

 parison with other sections. The cost of such material amounts to 

 millions in each of these States. Little fertilizing matter is applied to 

 the soil from Alabama westward, with the single exception of such 

 quantities of cotton-seed as are not required for seeding and for a few oil- 

 mills. In the eastern portion of the Ohio Valley experiments are tried 

 with commercial fertilizers by a few progressive farmers, and the use of 

 clover as a fertilizer is consi«ierably practiced there by immigrants from 

 Maryland and Pennsylvania. And here we may stop. The remainder 

 of the country has heretofore practiced the draining of farm-yard 

 manures into creeks and rivers, or the removal of barns from their 

 inconvenient accumulations; or, if they all- have not literally adopted 

 this practice, they have not indicated much faith in the necessity of 

 manuring. And yet these returns show that the lands of Iowa and 

 Minnesota, and even of Illinois, are made to bear an increase of 20 to 

 30 per cent, by a single experiment in green-manuring. Thoughtful 

 western farmers are seriously pondering the econom}- and profit of 

 prairie-laud fertilization. 



As to commercial fertilizers our correspondents generally appreciate 

 their value for specific uses, acknowledge their utilty in supplying 

 lacking material for plant-growth; accord to them a positive value in 

 hastening growth and maturity, but persist in the opinion that there is 

 fraud in the manipulation of some kinds, and that the genuine are held 

 at too high a price. They know that for the regular uses of farm-fertil- 

 ization they can obtain the needed elements at a cheaper rate. 



Many examples are given of the renovation of worn and apparently 

 worthless soils, and the increase of fertility in fresh but unpromising 

 lands. Fields that have been cultivated exhaustively for twenty and 

 even forty years have been restored to original productiveness, not by 

 guanos and superphosphates, at $00 to $80 per ton, but by inexpensive 

 local resources, the cheapest and most reliable of which is found in 

 clovering. In one case in Butler County, Pennsylvania, a section of 

 thin, gravelly laud, on which it was thought no one could secure a decent 

 living, came into the possession of German immigrants at nominal rates. 

 Tliey cleared off the brush, plowed, cultivated, turned nnder green 

 crops; saved every fertilizing material available; never duplicated a 

 crop in five or six years' rotation, and that tract is now a garden, and 

 from worthlesness has advanced to the value of $100 per acre, and is 

 yearly becoming more productive. Tliese owners, in some cases, have 

 raised aud educated families, lived comfortably, ride in carriages, and 

 have money at interest. In other instances in which the aid of clover 

 has been invoked, swine-feeding in the clover fields has been made a 

 valuable means of soil-improvement. In the South, a regiou which 

 many northern writers on agriculture assume most erroneously to be 

 unsuited to grass cnlture, and which southern farmers have strangely 

 neglected as a meat-produciug section for obvious reasons, a new era is 

 dawning, and clover and orchard-grass are in many places found to be 

 sources of immediate and heavy profit, and of greatly increased fertility. 



