120 PRESIDE SCIENCE. 



to the acre, while other farmers were growing barley, 

 fifteen bushels to the acre. I sold my wheat at 

 $3.50, while the barley went for $1.40 per bushel. 

 The plan of soil treatment has been to sow broad- 

 cast early in the season five hundred pounds of 

 farm superphosphate to the acre, mixed with one 

 hundred pounds of crude nitrate of potassa, or one 

 hundred and fifty pounds of nitrate of soda and fifty 

 pounds of sulphate of magnesia. The importance 

 of magnesia in the ash of wheat has been strangely 

 overlooked by chemists and by experimenters, and 

 I regard the employment of a salt holding this 

 element, in dressings for wheat land, as of great 

 utility. Nearly one eighth of the ash of wheat is 

 made up of magnesia, and as our granite New Eng- 

 land soils cannot well supply it, we must furnish it 

 in our manures. As regards the evil influence of 

 rust upon wheat, I am inclined to the opinion that 

 a well-fed, vigorous plant possesses a power of re- 

 sistance to parasitic growths, which is in a consid- 

 erable degree protective. I do not mean to say 

 that the farmer can positively and always place 

 himself beyond the reach of disasters resulting 

 from fungoid plants or destructive weather influ- 

 ences ; but I do say, that a good, vigorous, well- 

 fed stalk of wheat, corn, or other grain, will bear up 

 under adverse influences better than one that is 

 half starved and weakly. The battle is in favor of 



