86 MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



Before Prof. Atwatcr was obliged to stop, for the time, in his 

 investigations for want' of adequate means (which I hope and 

 believe will veiy soon be supplied to him) he had caused several 

 hundred experiments to be made in raising Indian corn, with and 

 without nitrogenous manure. The result of all these experiments 

 in different parts of the East and of the West came to this : that, 

 by the scientilic application of phosphates and potash, which 

 are now eabily obtained at ver}' low cost, crops of Indian, corn 

 were made averaging a little less than forty-two bushels of shelled 

 corn to the acre, on what was called poor or exhausted land. 

 Greater crops were made, of course, by the addition of nitrogenous 

 manure ; but where this consisted of anything but stable manure 

 which was on the premises, and reckoned at low cost, the addi- 

 tional crop of corn did not pay for the cost of the purchased 

 nitrogen. 



It has also been conclusively proved that by beginning with 

 phosphates and potash, raising more and more stock, and then 

 adding stable manure to the other ingredients, the crop of Indian 

 corn could be steadilj" increased. * 



"Where, then, does the corn plant obtain its nitrogen? "Where 

 does the clover get its nitrogen? "Where does the Southern cow- 

 pea, which thrives on the poorest land in the South — land so 

 poor that it is often said "that 'ere bit of land ain't even lit to 

 grow pea-vines on" — where does the cow-pea get its nitrogen? 



Is the Indian corn the missing link for New England? If it is, 

 the future of New England agriculture is assured beyond a ques- 

 tion, because by means of the corn plant we can, in my judgment, at 

 this time within twenty-five miles on each side of the Connecticut 

 river, within the State of Massachusetts, raise all the beef that the 

 people of Massachusetts require annually ; and perhaps at less 

 cost than it can be procured in any other way. 



This seems as rash an assertion as a theorist can presume to make ; 

 but it is no more rash than the word which I ventured to speak 

 some years ago in an address that I delivered at the opening of 

 the JNIanufacturers' and Mechanics' Institute, in which I made the 

 following statement : — " If I were to say to you that, next to the 

 abolition of slavery and the use of the railway and the steamship, 

 the re-discovery of the method of saving green crops, called ensi- 

 lage, will [)rove to be the most important event in its ellcct on the 

 material welfare of the present century, you may suggest that a 



