40 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pul). Doc. 



QuESTiox. How late do you cultivate the corn? 



Professor Roberts. I cultivate until the tassels come 

 out. Now, my friends, I would advise you in all kind- 

 ness to plant a good deal of timothy. AVhat I said al)out 

 feeding a horse a bushel of oats in the morning applies to 

 putting a large quantity of manure upon land. I saw a 

 piece of land not long ago that had had forty loads of 

 manure to the acre dum[)ed upon it, and I went to work and 

 figured up the nitrogen at sixteen cents a pound, the potash 

 at fourteen and a half cents, and the phosphoric acid at seven 

 cents, and I found that the man had \nit on between twenty 

 and thirty dollars' worth of plant food. Can you afford it? 



QuESTiox. How many stalks do you leave in a hill ? 



Professor Roberts. Three to four stalks of the Dent corn 

 called " Pride of the North." It has become acclimated Avith 

 us now, and gets ripe as quickly as the New York or Canada 

 hard corn. 



Now, my friends, I should just as soon think of i)lanting 

 peach trees two feet ai)art each way, and expect to get the 

 highest results (I can get some results), as of planting two 

 bushels or one bushel of corn i)cr acre. Corn is a sun plant ; 

 it wants sun all around it in order to develop the valuable 

 carbo-hydrates. 



Now, I want to speak about soil exhaustion. My friends, 

 your soil is not exhausted. You cannot exhaust the soil ; 

 the Lord took good care about that. You may deplete it so 

 far that profitable culture under the high-priced system of 

 labor we have now ceases, I grant you. Now, I have taken 

 some land at Cornell University that was supposed to l)e very 

 poor, worn out, as it was termed, and had been given up, 

 and I have ])een raising on it the last four years an average 

 per year of twenty-five bushels of winter wheat per acre 

 without any rest, without any phosphates or any manure. I 

 tell you this not to brag, but to emphasize the importance 

 of thorough culture. I say I tell you these things not to 

 l)rag, because, if there is anybody in the world who cannot 

 afford to brag, it is a })rofessor. He must tell facts and be 

 able to prove them, or he is not Avorth much. That is the 

 way I feel. I hate any unsupported statements. Now, I 

 believe you are in the same boat that I was in a few years 



