80 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



should grow me a crop of corn. Here are the materials that 

 I want you to put on the land, and make me fifty bushels 

 of. corn to the acre, over and above what the land would 

 naturally produce, with the proper proportion of stalks. I 

 want you to try the experiment carefully and report to me in 

 the fall." He agreed to do it, and I knew he would do what 

 he said. He selected a plot of land on a meadow. I asked 

 him how much he thought it would bear to the acre, without 

 manure. He said thirty bushels to the acre. "Very good," 

 I said ; M I have brought you the material to make fifty 

 bushels of corn with its natural proportion of stalks. If you 

 get thirty bushels without manure, I am to have eighty 

 bushels with manure." I did not see this crop during the 

 year ; but in the month of December folloAving, I received 

 this strange report : That he had carefully carried the 

 experiment through, weighed his corn in December, and the 

 result of the experiment was, that the plot without manure, 

 instead of having produced thirty bushels, did not give but 

 eighteen, and that the plot with manure made 83f bushels to 

 the acre. I got, therefore, a great deal more corn than I 

 ought to have had. It went up, just as the other two experi- 

 ments did, above the original statement, but the plot without 

 manure had gone down to eighteen bushels. I wrote a letter 

 to Mr. N. A. Smith, in which I said, "If I did not know you 

 were a man of truth, I should believe you lied. It cannot be 

 possible. There is a mistake somewhere about this. That 

 plot could not, with that material for fifty bushels of corn, 

 have gone up to eighty bushels, or else something ailed the 

 crop without the manure. Did the grasshoppers eat it, or 

 did the army-worm eat it? This experiment cannot be true." 

 He replied : " I can't tell you anything about it, only this ; I 

 concluded not to plant the lot which I showed you, and I put 

 my cornfield on the other side of the road, on low land ; 

 laud that was rich, but so cold that it could not bear corn with- 

 out manure ; but I had to plant one plot without manure, and 

 the consequence was, that the corn planted on that land 

 originally came up yellow corn, it remained yellow corn 

 throughout the season ; did not ripen, and I got very poor, 

 miserable stuff. It was not half cured-off when I harvested 

 aud husked it ; but on the plot that had manure applied to it, 



