286 AGRICULTURAL REPORT. 
at all, it is in giving an early start tothe corn. Animal manure from the 
stables and farm-pens shows improvement for years, and a good degree 
of care is taken in saving it. Augusta: Few fertilizers are used except 
barn-yard manure and plaster. The latter, mixed with ashes in the 
proportion of one-third to two-thirds, and applied in the hill, is very bene- 
ficial to corn, and is sown with fine effect on the new crop of clover, in 
March or April, at the rate of two busheis of plaster per acre. Home- 
made manures are used in much larger proportion than commercial, 
and, except in comparison with plaster, with better results. The latter 
increases the production of corn and clover 25 per cent. over bought 
manures, and in an equal if not greater ratio over barn-yard manure. 
The soil is mostly limestone. Rockbridge: Commercial manures are 
used to a very limited extent, not affording opportunity of stating satis- 
factory results. The main reliance is on lime, plaster, and clover, with 
stable and barn-yard manure when at command. Highland: No com- 
mercial fertilizers used; nothing but stable manure. Hay is generally . 
stacked and fed on the meadows. Irom five to twenty loads of manure 
are as much as is generally made on a farm, and this is mostly applied 
to garden paiches. If any is left over, it goes to the corn-field. Bote- 
tourt: The best farmers have almost abandoned the use of bought fer- 
tilizers, and are turning more attention to home-made manures, with 
lime, clover, and plaster, from which the results are more satisfactory. 
Roanoke: Only a small quantity of commercial fertilizers used. The 
chief value they promise is in securing a stand of grass; but this is 
attained as well by the use of plaster, which farmers sow every year on all 
their grass lands, at the rate of sixty to one hundred pounds per acre. 
The lands are very easily improved by grass and plaster. 
Southwest Virginia.—Montgomery: Bought manures are used to a 
very limited extent, with the exception of plaster, which is applied 
quite freely. Not more than one-tenth of the tilled acreage is fertilized 
in any other mode than by plaster and the culture of clover. Home- 
made manure is not carefully saved, and is poor in quality, from the 
absence of comfortable shelter for stock, and the scarcity of labor; but 
no land responds more freely to its application, and the productive 
power of the soil is: capable of being almost indefinitely increased by 
judicious manuring. Pulaski: The use of all kinds of fertilizers is very 
limited. Wythe: Fertilizers used to a moderate extent; guano more | 
than any other kind, for the purpose of getting the land set in grass. 
Farmers depend on grazing and feeding their stock to keep up the fer- 
tility of their lands. Bland: Stable manure and plaster are the only 
fertilizers in use, the results depending on the quantity applied. Plas- 
ter is found most economical, and affords an increased production of 
one-half the entire yield per acre. Carroll: Fertilizers are not exten- 
sively used, grass crops being mostly relied on for improvement. Not 
more than one-tenth of the tilled acreage is improved in any other man- 
ner, and not more than one-twentieth of the fertilizers used is-com- 
mercial. A few farmers have used plaster and lime on their wheat and 
grass crops with beneficial results. Little or no guano has ever been 
used in the county. Grayson: The use of fertilizers is largely on the ° 
increase, chiefly home-made, with plaster from the adjoining county of 
Smythe. Plaster. is regarded as the cheapest of all fertilizers. Itis 
applied at the rate of one bushel to the acre, with ten to twenty loads 
of barn-yard manure, either for corn or wheat—mostly tlre latter. Plas- | 
ter alone will increase the product of grass three to four fold. Neither 
guano nor superphosphates have been used in quantity worthy of men- 
tion. Washington: Fertilizers of some description, either from the 
