117 



manure is less than ten cords each by the farmers of MarWe- 

 head, the av^erage quantity of manure used by them is fort/ 

 cords or more. We find here, then, a community who, in refuta- 

 tion of the old axiom that barn yard manure lies at the basis of 

 successful agriculture, have for twenty years kept their soil in 

 the highest state of fertility with but little dependence upon it, 

 while they are known by their crops far and wide as successful 

 market farmers. How they have accomplished this, what plant 

 food they use as a substitute and hov\^ they prepare it for the 

 soil does not come within the sphere of my article, and I will 

 therefore pass on to giv i a single illustration from my own ex- 

 perience how a large crop of cabbages were successfully raised 

 without any help from barn manure. 



In the spring of 1874 I broke up in an old pasture, wherever 

 I could find sufficient depth of soil among the ledges, about 

 three acres of rough hill-top and sides. As the road up the hill 

 was very steep, making ^he teaming of common compost a very 

 difficult matter, while six hundred cords on various fields of til- 

 lage had about exhausted all resources in that direction, I was 

 more than half compelled to use concentrated fertilizer as a sub- 

 stitute. I chose hen manure, ground bone, and German potash 

 salts. The hen manure was collected in town at a dollar a bar- 

 rel, the bone was a part of about thirty tons of bones that had 

 laid together until about rotten and were then ground in a bark 

 mill, which I purchased at from twenty to twenty-five dollars per 

 ton. These had been offered in neighboring towns in large or 

 small lots and yet there were found but two purchasers suffici- 

 ently intelligent or enterprising to invest in them at this low fig- 

 ure ! I am happy to say that our Vice President, Dr. Loring, 

 was one of these, the name of the other gentleman I have for- 

 gotten. The condition of the bones was so coarse that probably 

 the word crushed would best define it. The potash salts used 

 were of the cheapest variety, known by the name of Kanite 



