131 



were growing vegetables have now turned their attention to cul- 

 tivation of tobacco, from the fact that it returns to them a 

 greater amount of money, according to the amount of time and 

 labor expended. Perhaps it should be the aim of every farmer 

 to ascertain the chemical nature of the materials required by 

 various plants and the best methods of obtaining these materials 

 with reference to stimulating plant life. According to the sev- 

 eral statements which have been submitted to the Committee 

 with cost of growing crops and income received, we judge the 

 raising of roots to be a profitable business. The much lamented 

 A. J. Downing has well said "To be happy in any business or oc- 

 cupation (and country life on a farm is a matter of business) we 

 must have some kind of success in it, and there is no success 

 without profit and no profit with without practical knowledge of 

 farming." 



Committee — Alonzo B. Fellows, Bennett Grif^n. Joseph S. 

 Howe, James P. King, Aaron Lowe. 



ONIONS. 



STATEMENT OF J. J. H. GREGORY. 



The lot of onions offered for premium are of the early Red 

 Globe variety, and were grown on a piece of reclaimed meadow 

 land. This land after having been suitably drained, was covered 

 with sand and gravelly loam at the rate of about a hundred two 

 horse loads per acre. The land on which the onions grew, had 

 onions also the year previous and the year before that, we cul- 

 tivated it to cabbages and potatoes. The manure used --this 

 season was mostly a compost of well rotted glue manure and 

 muck, which had absorbed the drainings from a manure pile of 

 the same material located on a slope above. It was applied at 

 a rate of about nine cords to the acre. The land was brushed and 

 planted in rows fourteen inches apart at the rate of four pounds 



