FERTILIZERS. 543 



brought up with guano and manipulated commercial manures, 

 ground bone, etc. Ashes and lime were frequently applied to 

 the clover fields, and gypsum invariably to both clover and corn, 

 at the rate of a bushel and a half per acre. 



The time of which I am writing was forty years ago, and the 

 system described was an old practice then ; yet it was a strictly 

 scientific system of fertilization. There is none like it now, nor 

 are there now any such crops as were then seen. At that day, 

 agriculture was the leading profession ; the farmers were the 

 wealthiest people, and the best people, and ranked indisputably 

 at the head of the community. Are such things gone, without 

 return ? It is for the farmers to determine at this time. A few 

 more years such as these twenty-five years last past, and no 

 power under heaven can restdre the lost prestige of American 

 agriculture. 



With regard to the mode of applying commercial manures, 

 I desire to offer a few suggestions. Experience clearly demon- 

 strates that the effect of concentrated manures is much greater 

 when applied in drills than when broadcast. One reason for 

 the superiority of the drilling is found in the fact of the much 

 greater uniformity of application by the machine. But the 

 chief reason is that, by concentrating the material in the drill 

 rows, the feeding roots gain readier and more complete access 

 to it than if more widely diffused through the soil. It should 

 be understood that, when once widely diffused by broadcasting, 

 it does not become concentrated by any natural process, but has 

 rather a tendency to further diffusion and dilution by the soil. 

 Plant food does not exist in the soil in solution, but in moist 

 mechanical admixture through, and adhesion to, the soil, to 

 such an extent that percolating water does not move it. The 

 particles of plant food being thus nearly stationary in the soil, 

 the plant in order to obtain it must lay its roots alongside of it, 

 which is rendered difficult or impossible by great diffusion and 

 dilution by the soil. It is well to keep this principle in mind at 

 all times, in dealing with concentrated manures. In the old 

 five-shift system, undoubtedly the correct place for the com- 

 mercial manure was the corn-land wheat, because that was the 

 third successive grain crop taken from the field, and was the weak 

 point in the rotation. The usual mode of drilling in the fer- 



