186 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



Night soil was spread on about one-half acre ; here it was quite 

 badly lodged, which prevented it from filling well. I think the 

 crop was injured from this cause at least five bushels ; it was 

 also infested by the aphis, or wheat louse, while in milk. I 

 think one and a half bushels of seed per acre enough, as it will 

 not be so liable to lodge as when sown thicker, and it gives the 

 grass seed a better chance to stand the drought of summer, 

 especially when the wheat crop is taken off. I soaked my seed 

 in strong salt water about four hours, and dried it with air- 

 slacked lime. The lime is of great advantage in sowing, if no 

 farther, as the seed can be distinctly seen by the sower, and 

 enables him to sow much more uniformly. 



Product, seventy-four and two-thirds bushels on two and one- 

 tenth acres ; weight, sixty pounds to a measured bushel. 



Statement of Joseph Kingman. 



Wheat. — Accompanying the certificate of the measure of 

 land on which I raised my wheat, and the amount of the grain, 

 viz., twenty-seven and sixteen-sixtieths bushels, I send a state- 

 ment of my mode of culture. The land was in grass in 

 the spring of 1860. That season it was planted to corn, 

 manured at the rate of fifteen loads to the acre, with barn 

 manure ploughed under the sod. In the spring of 1861, I 

 put on twenty loads of the same manure, ploughing and 

 harrowing it in, and planted to early potatoes. One-half 

 acre of this land I sowed to winter wheat, about the 25th of 

 August, without additional manure. The seed was of two kinds, 

 white flint and Black Sea, a half-bushel of each. The former 

 I have raised for ten years past. Comparing the yield of the 

 two varieties, I found that of the white flint more by one and 

 one-half bushels, the extent and quality of the land being the 

 same. The Black Sea, which I had from Western New York, 

 docs not, I think, endure our winters, as well as the other kind. 

 The half acre yielded fourteen and nine-sixtietlis bushels. The 

 remainder of the land I left for spring wheat, as it was rather 

 flat fur winter sowing. I sowed near the 10th of April, putting 

 on fifty bushels of leached and ten of unlcached ashes. 

 It came up well, grew luxuriantly, and looked finely until it 

 blossomed, when, I should think, at least one-fifth of the heads 



