Re hich a — 4 
83 On prhiag. Pat ee 
anecdotes and discussions, sufficiently amusing, to cheer 
one through dissertations, on a topic apparently insipid 
and unentertaining. 
After all that our present experience enables us to 
say, we have much to learn on the qualities and effects of 
. the gypsum, as it relates to agriculture. I have known 
it produce no effect for four years, and then throw up a 
most astonishing vegetation; and this after repeated 
ploughings, for both winter and summer crops. In a 
field now in clover, I perceive it most luxuriant, where 
Indian corn hills were plaistered with no effect on the 
corn, four or five years ago. This is one among many 
instances I have had in my own fields, and have heard 
from other farmers, of similar effects. (4) 
Whatever be the cause, dew will remain on a part 
of a grass field plaistered, an hour or two in a morning, 
after all moisture is evaporated from the part of the 
same field not plaistered. I have also frequently seen 
this effect in my garden beds, which, if plaistered, will 
(4) May not this be accounted. for, by supposing that the 
operative principle inthe plaister, was an over-charge for the 
fermentable substances then in the earth ; and that it did 
not find enough of these substances to operate on, until the 
time when it produced the vegetation here mentioned ?— 
[Vede note (r_).|* 
* [have on several occasions observed strong tufts of clover, sometimes of wheat, when I have. 
dunged a field, which had been plaistered on the corn hills, where those hills had been. I supposed 
the dung afforded a pabulum for the acid of the plaister which had been lavishly thrown on the 
hills ; and, until the dung was spplied, remained in combination. See yol..1, agricultural memoirs, 
174. 
Bage <a 
September, 1810.. 
