THE WHEAT CULTUKIST. 231 



R. Ranson, Aslitabula County, Ohio, writes, touching 

 pulverized charcoal, as follows : " I tried another experi- 

 ment in 1860. My lands are coarse or loose gravel of 

 rather poor quality. I sowed an acre of winter wheat 

 (the blue-stem) preparing my ground as follows : 



" The field was sown with barley in the spring pre- 

 vious ; yield small (eighteen bushels per acre). I turned in 

 the stubble the last week in August, harrowed it over, then 

 took about eighteen bushels charcoal crushed fine, and 

 top-dressed a strip through the middle of the acre over 

 about one-third of its length ; I then sowed on my 

 wheat broadcast and harrowed it over twice. The 

 result was, the heads when ripe were at least twice as 

 long as where no coal was put on. I harvested all 

 together ; the yield was forty-three bushels. I think 

 by applying about fifty bushels of coal to the acre 

 as a top-dressing, made fine by grinding in a common 

 bark mill, it would increase the yield at least four hun- 

 dred per cent., if the soil is poor. 



"He further states he used burned clay and ashes 

 in the fall of 1860, at the rate of about one hundred 

 bushels of burned clay, taken from a fallow where tim- 

 ber had been uprooted several years by heavy winds. 

 The soil on which the timber grew was burned together 

 with the old roots and clay entwined, and perhaps some 

 muck ; the whole, ashes, clay and muck, after being 

 burned as above, were hauled off in a wagon and put 

 upon the wheat field as a top-dressing, and harrowed in 

 with the wheat. The land was poor quality of gravel ; 

 the yield was about five hundred per cent, over the re- 

 mainder of the field where no clay was put. I think 

 there is no fertilizer ahead of this as a top-dresser." See 

 Mixing Soils, second volume of Young Farmer's Manual. 



