134 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



MAlSrUEES. 



ESSEX. 



From the Report of the Committee. 



The question how can the farmer maintain and increase the 

 fertility of his fields, and also secure an annual remunerative 

 crop, is one of paramount interest to every cultivator of the 

 soil, and at the same time difficult to answer. The result of 

 the carefully conducted experiments before alluded to, and 

 many others which, after the ice was once broken, were made 

 public by modest experimenters, who did not care to stem the 

 flood-tide of popular advertisements and endorsements of the 

 various nostrums for securing universal fertility is, that they 

 do not answer the desired end. What little fertilizing quality 

 they possess will not pay the cost of them. We mention, for 

 instance, the flour of bone. No one questions the great fertil- 

 izing properties of bone, but that the flour of bone is in a condi- 

 tion to be immediately assimilated by plant growth; it therefore 

 fails to answer the purpose required of it. Hence the farmer 

 who earns his money cannot afford to pay the high price 

 demanded for it when he can buy the pure unground bones for 

 one-third the price, and reduce them at a small expense to a 

 condition readily assimilated by all plants. 



Mr. Henry Coleman uttered a valuable truth when on being 

 asked, " What has chemistry done for the farmer ? " he replied 

 that it had dissolved bones by sulphuric acid. 



Nor is it for a moment questioned that Peruvian guano is a 

 very valuable specific fertilizer, but as a general thing its high 

 cost places it beyond the reach of the practical farmer. Fish 

 pomice or guano, is sold at a comparatively low price, is unadul- 

 terated, makes a valuable compost, and may perhaps be afforded. 

 Many of the articles offered in our markets as fertilizers at high 

 prices, recommended as being entirely inoffensive to the most 

 fastidious, may be well adapted to those who would farm with 

 kid gloves on, and to such only can we recommend them. 



What then are the resources of the farmer for manure? We 

 answer — the barnyard, the stable, the privy, waste animal and 



