70 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



Professor Brooks. I think so. 



Ex-Governor Hoard. The sunlight is very destructive 

 to certain forms of bacteria. 



Professor Brooks. Yes. The house is new, the glass is 

 clean. It is one of the ideas of Dr. Stone that glass must 

 be kept clean. It was perfectly bright and clean ; it could 

 not intercept the sun's rays to any extent, so far as I could 

 see ; and then, under those extreme conditions, the soil was 

 left for da} r s, weeks and months, and turned over repeat- 

 edly, with the intense heat and light of the house upon it, 

 and it was just as bad as where it was not dried in that way. 



There is just one other point, if you will pardon me, in 

 regard to what Professor Woods has said about rotation. I 

 would say I think exceedingly well of this rotation of land 

 suited to potatoes, and where cows are kept, silage can be 

 used. Clover sowed to begin with, then potatoes raised on 

 the land, and the land enriched Avith fertilizer later. The 

 next year corn, well manured, and the land seeded to mixed 

 grass and clover, seeded the latter part of July or first of 

 August. The reason that I prefer to have corn is that a corn 

 crop is of value on the farm. I do not recommend usually 

 two years of corn, but the corn one year, following the pota- 

 toes, can be husked, and the next year the corn can go into 

 silage, and then the land is seeded. 



Ex-Governor Hoard. Your experience with clover is 

 the same as mine, only I find the difficulty is to get the 

 clover. 



Professor Brooks. You raise an important point there, 

 a point on which there is much need of some light, — how 

 to get clover. Many a farmer who piles the manure on a 

 field of corn or some other crop in heavy quantities, and then 

 sows mixed grass and clover, wonders why he does not get a 

 good catch of clover. I am not surprised in the least. By 

 that treatment he has brought the soil into the best possible 

 condition for grass, and he has therefore rendered it all the 

 more difficult for the clover to get hold. 



vYe have on our place one field where fertilizers on the 

 land have been used in a very peculiar way, — fertilizer on 

 one plot, phosphoric acid and potash on another, on another 



