202 MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



E. W. Wood announced the decease of Hervey Davis, and 

 moved the appointment of a committee to prepare memorial reso- 

 lutions. The motion was carried, and the Chair appointed as that 

 Committee, Mr. Wood, Robert Manning, and Benjamin G. Smith. 



The meeting was then dissolved. 



MEETING FOR DISCUSSION. 

 • A Comparison op Manures for the Garden and Orchard. 



By Professor G. C. Caldwell, Ithaca, N.T. 



How to manure the garden or the orchard for the most profitable 

 results is one of the most difficult questions that the horticulturist 

 has to meet. Of the biggest and most solid cabbages, the earliest 

 peas, the largest squashes, the sweetest and most prolific berries, 

 the handsomest and most delicatel}' flavored grapes, the most lus- 

 cious peaches or pears, the earliest or the best late-keeping apples, 

 he has an unlimited variety offered him b}' all the seedsmen or nur- 

 serymen in the land ; and he need find no difficulty whatever in 

 laying out to good advantage all the mone}' he has to spare for 

 use in this direction. Of the most suitable land on which to plant 

 all these crops there is enough and to spare somewhere in all this 

 wide country. Of tools and labor-saving machines of every kind, 

 and of men and animals to run or to use them, there is no scarcity. 

 In respect to all these supplies there is only embarrassment of 

 riches ; and no crop need fail of producing good fruit abundantly, 

 from any want of liberal provision for its highest requirements on 

 any of these lines. 



But is there such a superabundance of suppl}', when we come to 

 the matter of the highest requirements as to the food for these 

 crops? Is there a sufficiency of a supplj' of such kinds of food 

 as will, in the general run of garden and fruit culture, give the 

 surest results? Is not the gardener's call always for more stable 

 manure ? and is the call of the fruit grower any less loud ? One 

 naturally asks, why is this so, when there are, elsewhere at least, 

 immense if not inexhaustible quantities of the nitrogen, phos- 

 phoric acid, and potash, that are reckoned as so important plant 

 nutrients, all to be had for the purchasing, and under so great 

 competition that they ought to be had for as low rates as they can 

 be sold for, paying fair profits. They can be had also in every 

 form of combination, and ever}' degree of assirailability, and in 

 any desired mixture ; and, further, to save the farmer or the gar- 



