374 HANDY-BOOK OP HUSBANDRY. 



hune. Mr. Geddes is one of the most skillful and enlightened 

 farmers in the country. He says : — 



■" At a meeting of the New York State Agricultural Society, 

 " many years ago, I was awarded the first premium for the best 

 " cultivated farm in competition that year, — 1845. The com- 

 '*mittee that made the award said that I did not use enough 

 "'manure. My four hundred to five hundred loads from the 

 " barns and stables drawn out each year, and my fourteen tons of 

 " gypsum, and all the ashes made on the premises, they said was 

 "too little for the farm. A discussion followed the reading of 

 " the report, and I tried to show that I did do all that true 

 " economy dictated in the way of making barn-yard manure ; 

 "that gypsum and clover furnished the means of increasing fer- 

 "tility, at less cost than drawing leaves from the woods, muck 

 *'from the swamps, and making expensive compost heaps. In 

 " the years that followed, my friend, the author of this last edi- 

 " tion of the book I have been noticing, has had not a little laugh 

 "at my expense, growing out of my views on the manure ques- 

 "tion. In several of the meetings for discussion of our State 

 " Agricultural Society, manure has been the subject before us, 

 " and for all these years, I have insisted that a farm should, 

 " unless situated in the immediate vicinity of some village or city, 

 "be so managed that its fertility should constantly increase, with- 

 " out going off of it for manure, with the exception of gypsum, 

 "and perhaps salt. In my report 'on the agriculture and indus- 

 " try of the county of Onondaga,' made in i860, I said much of 

 "the use of red clover as a fertilizer, and doubtless astonished 

 "many of my readers by some things in that report. In turn I 

 " was not a little astonished at some of the comments made on 

 *' my statements. A very eminent writer on agricultural matters, 

 *' living in New Hampshire, said over his own name, in an agri- 

 " cultural paper, that he had never before heard of plowing in a 

 " crop of clover for manure, and that where he lived the farmers 

 " preferred to make hay, rather than manure, of clover. 



" In Mr. Allen's reference to what I said on this question, he 

 " makes me say that the farmers in this vicinity ' would not draw 

 " barn manure a mile, if it u^ere given to them.' I do not complain 

 "of this, for perhaps, I have in some discussion said this ; but I 

 "was speaking of barn manure, or rather ^-^jr-^ manure as it is 

 " made here, where, as Mr. Allen says, ' we raise wheat 

 "largely as well as other cereals.' In doing this, we raise a great 

 " deal of straw and corn-stalks. The straw and corn-stalks 



