CONTINUATION OF EXPERIMENTS. 81 



the corn came up rank and strong, grew vigorously during the 

 season, and produced the crop I have stated." Therefore, I 

 was obliged to accept the result, as he had stated it, and I 

 could not tell, without some reasoning, whether the experiment 

 was a success or a failure. But I knew very well that it was 

 one of those failures that every farmer would like to have 

 happen on his farm, and therefore I was satisfied. 



These experiments have been continued year after year, on 

 the same land. Last year, as I said, we tried the experiment 

 on land directly in the farmer's way, and we were a nuisance 

 to him, having our little twenty-rod plots in a large field. 

 He wanted us out of the way, and I did not blame him for 

 that, for we were a lawless set ; and so we went off into 

 another field and selected a plot which we can have until the 

 crack of doom, for aught I know. It is on the hill east of 

 the plant-house; on that poor miserable drift-soil, where the 

 subsoil is hard-pan and the upper soil is full of water and 

 stone. Those of you who have been to the College, know 

 what it is better than I can describe it to you. It was 

 manured for a crop of corn in 1868, and then was seeded 

 down and mown from that time until this year, when it pro- 

 duced so small a crop of grass that my friend Dillon thought 

 it was not worth mowing. The statement was made, "On 

 this land, I will make fifty bushels of corn more than the land 

 will produce without manure." I said, "I will not make the 

 mistake I did last year by putting in more material than I 

 want to go into the corn. I will put on just material enough 

 to make fifty bushels of corn, and its natural proportion 

 of stalks, without putting on any more to be charged to the 

 land. I will know where I am." Two plots were selected, 

 which were just alike, so far as we could judge, staked off in 

 just the same way, and the corn planted and cultivated in the 

 same way. The first crop of corn was what we call Connect- 

 icut River twelve-rowed corn. We have named it "the 

 Stebbins corn." This year we planted what we know as "the 

 Cummings corn," a fine large corn which is grown in that 

 neighborhood, and has that local name. It resembles the 

 "King Philip" corn. The two plots were planted on the 

 same day, and the material was applied to one of them to 

 make fifty bushels of corn. It grew magnificently. We 

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