114 FIRESIDE SCIENCE. 



mencecl. A measured acre of land of this nature 

 was ploughed in the autumn of 1863, and in the 

 succeeding spring dressed with five hundred pounds 

 of pure, fine bone, sown broadcast, and then planted 

 with corn, a handful of farm-made superphosphate 

 being placed in each hill. One hundred and fifty- 

 seven bushels of corn in the ear were taken from 

 the field in the autumn of 1864. After the corn 

 was removed the land w r as ploughed, and again 

 dressed with eight hundred pounds of a mixture 

 consisting of ashes, bone dust, and refuse saltpetre, 

 and sowed down to winter rye and seeded with 

 timothy. The crop was thirty-one bushels of nice, 

 plump grain. ' The season of 1866 was exceedingly 

 dry, and the tender grass roots were s.o parched 

 with heat, that the hay crop was cut short materi- 

 ally. The product of this field was only twenty- 

 three hundred pounds. The next season a top- 

 dressing was given it of five hundred pounds of a 

 compost of gelatine and peat (the gelatine being 

 the liquid or resultant product coming from the 

 steaming of bones), and the hay crop reachecl 

 forty-three hundred pounds. The crop of 1868, 

 with the aftermath, reached two and a half tons. 

 That of 1869, after a top-dressing of two hundred 

 pounds of Peruvian guano, was two and a quarter 

 tons. In 1870 it was a little less than two tons. 

 In this experiment, a dry field, originally exhausted, 



