202 



THE GENESEE FARMER. 



will grow without phosphates. Turnips, which are 

 " not intended to go to seed," although they do not 

 contain as much phosphoric acid as wheat and other 

 cereals, "require" for their maximum _ growth a 

 greater quantity of phosphates in the soil than any 

 other eommonly cultivated crop. 



" The urine of man is mucli more vahialjle than that 

 of the sheep, cow or horse, as it contains over eight 

 per cent, of the phosphates, which are not found in 

 the iiriue of other animals, except possibly the hog." 



According to a large number of analyses made 

 and collated by Lawks and Gilbert, the " urine of 

 man" does not contain half of one per cent. (0.37) 

 of phosphates ; and the assertion that phosphates 

 « are not found in the urine of other animals," is still, 

 farther from the truth. 



" A soil should never be idle— plant your crops 

 keep the land from weeds, and depend mainly upon 

 the inorganic compounds elaborated by nature for 

 their success. You may rest assured that more atten- 

 tion should be paid to the inorganic constituents of 

 crops than has been. As, for example, I prepared an 

 inorganic manure for wheat, thus : to five pounds of 

 silicate of potash in solution, add five pounds of bone- 

 dust ; when dry, incorporate with it fifteen pounds of 

 common Turks Island salt, and thirteen pounds of 

 plaster of Paris. This composition produced gi-eat 

 results, not only in the yield of the grain, but in the 

 beauty of the straw, which was thicker than a pipe- 

 stem. I then added the following year to the same 

 Qpmpound, twenty pounds of wheat bran, and ten 

 pounds of the ash of wheat straw, and the production 

 was enormous. If land was so manured, eighty bush- 

 els of wheat would result from an acre. I have grown, 

 by another process, at the rate of seventy-nine and 

 three-quarter bushels of wheat to the acre." 



We cannot of course contradict this statement. 

 Mr. P. may have obtained an " enormous " crop from 

 such a dressing ; but we have seen essentially the 

 same manure applied, without any particular benefit. 

 It is certainly absurd to suppose that " if land was 

 so manured, eighty bushels of wheat would result 

 from an acre." 



" Last year I was desirous of increasing the bones 

 of several calves, and not having sulphuric acid at 

 hand to dissolve bones for that purpose, I tried an ex- 

 periment with lime-water, that proved to be perfectly 

 effectual. The bones were j^laced in a large iron ket- 

 tle, filled with slacked lime in solution, and boiled 

 four hours, reducing them to a powder, which was 

 used with irrigating water on grass land from which 

 the calves fed, adding to it the necessary amount of 

 phospliate of lime." 



However true it may be that Mr. Pell's calves 

 had plenty of bone in them, it is absurd to suppose 

 that the process he adopted had anything to do in 

 "increasing the bones" of the calves. In the first 

 place, boiling the bones in lime-water would not dis- 

 solve them — and even if it would, there is not the 

 slightest evidence that soluble phosphate of lime 

 will increase the proportion of this substance in the 

 grass; or if it did, that grass containing an unusual 

 quantity of phosphate of lime would increase the 

 growth of bones in animals feeding on it. 



" Farmers often complain of long protracted drouths 

 in s\immer ; much to my surprise, as I glory in dry 

 weather, because it restores the constituents of suc- 

 ceeding CYops, and renovates the soil by increasing the 

 mineral matters that have beon dissipated by growing 



grain and occasional ram — and were it not for drouths, 

 a barren waste would in time result. God thins coun- 

 teracts man's thriftlessness by evaporating moisture 

 from the earth's surface, and tlms inducing lower 

 stratums of water to rise by capillary attraction, which 

 carry in solution soda, potash, lime, maguesia, &c.,to 

 the earth's surface, when evaporation carries off the 

 water, and leaves these vahiable substances for man's 

 Crops. I discovered this fact by having a sample of 

 soil analyzed in the spring, when a mere trace of these 

 matters was found ; in the fall following, after a very 

 severe drouth, a portion of soil from the same spot 

 was analyzed again, and contained them all in very 

 appreciable quantities — showing that they liad been 

 freed from their siliceous coatings by atmospheric in- 

 fluences." 



Whether water ascending from the subsoil brings 

 with it "soda, potash, lime, magnesia, &c.," or not, 

 we will not undertake to say. The somewhat re- 

 cent experiments of Prof. Way, however, indicate 

 that water percolating through a soil dissolves out 

 far less of the elements of plants than had been pre- 

 viously supposed, and it is, therefore, probable that 

 ascending water is not over-charged with these in- 

 gredients. Be this as it may, however, we have not 

 the slightest hesitation in saying that no chemist in 

 the world, by the most rigid analysis of the soil, can 

 determine the point. 



" If you wish to manure a field of potatoes advan-' 

 tageously, and produce remarkable results, use the;' 

 manure of hogs fed on potatoes." > 



Nonsense. The manure made by bogs fed on corn,' 

 or still better, on peas, would be far richer in those 

 elements which experience proves are most required 

 by the potato, and would produce more "remarkable 

 results." 



" Wisconsin, thirteen years since, produced forty 

 bushels of wheat to the acre — now only twenty." 



We should like to see the statistics. The average 

 crop of wheat in Western New York, in her palmiest 

 days, was never twenty bushels per acre. 



" Tliousands of acres in our own State might pro- 

 duce admirable crops, if their owners would analyze 

 the earth, and add the missing requisites, which, nine 

 cases out of ten, would be found to be lime, phos- 

 phate of lime, or potash." 



The ingredients mentioned, and in fact all the con- 

 stituents of plants, exist on all soils capable of pro- 

 ducing a blade of quack grass or a Canada thistle. 

 The soil may not contain them in sufficient quantity 

 to enable it to produce good crops, but chemical 

 analysis is incapable of determining whether it does 

 or not 



M^ I tt^ 



CULTIVATION OF BUCKWHEAT, 



Buckwheat requires and receives but little culti- 

 vation. It is often sown on the roughest and the poor- 

 est of soils, and in favorable seasons produces good 

 crops; yet, with buckwheat as with any other crop, 

 good cultivation is usually the most profitable. A 

 well prepared, mellow soil, is desirable. Even a lit- 

 tle manure may be applied on poor land with advan- 

 tage. We have seen one hundred pounds of gu,ano, 

 used on a light, dry, poverty-stricken hill-side field in 

 Massachusetts, more than double the yield of buck- 

 wheat. " No crop," says an experienced writer, " will 

 feel manure of any kind, or in any state, so quick as 

 buckwheat" 



