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Greatest amount of Produce from a given surface. Vol. IX. 



p5r?tory to a crop of wheat: as soon as one 

 or two clays hauling is ahead, a careful man 

 is employed to spread, having a bag or 

 bucket by him with plaster of paris in, to 

 sow a light coat over the square as soon as 

 the heap of manure is carefully spread ; se- 

 veral barrels containing plaster, being pre- 

 viously distributed over the field for the 

 spreader to resort to, and the idea strongly 

 impressed upon the man, that I would prefer 

 to pay for two or three days extra labour if 

 he will spend the time in spreading evenly, 

 and parting and breaking all large pieces of 

 the manure, instead of carelessly throwing 

 it round, regardless where it falls, or how 

 large the parts may be ; my convictions are 

 that much is lost to the crop by careless 

 management of manure. After the spread- 

 ing is finished, the field is shut up, and so 

 left till near the time for sowing ; it is then 

 carefully ploughed, sowed and well harrow- 

 ed, sometimes rolled immediately, and some- 

 times not till spring. Advantages of this 

 whole plan are, first, that roofing a sufficient 

 portion of the barn-yard, you can fodder your 

 cattle in the dry, and they have their choice 

 of shelter or the open air; second, your team 

 will draw at least one-third more in value of 

 manure at a load, there being not half so 

 much water in it; third, an equal bulk — it 

 being richer — will manure a larger space of 

 ground; fourth, and most important, and caps 

 all the others, a uniformly good crop of 

 fine heavy wheat, from land, not by any 

 means the best of wheat land. The first 

 and only disadvantage is, a little more diffi- 

 culty to get it spread evenly. I may remark 

 that the uniformly good crop extended just 

 as far over the fields as the manure — man- 

 aged as above — reached; the remaining part 

 of the fields having had the exposed or un- 

 sheltered manure put on them, though in 

 greater weight, produced a crop of one-half 

 to two-thirds in value. I am not chemist or 

 philosopher of sufficient depth to account, by 

 a long course of reasoning, for the result; I 

 am satisfied to continue this plan till a better 

 is learned; its cheapness commends it to me. 

 Another little experiment was made pre- 

 vious to the foregoing, and which is intended 

 to be repeated, though on land somewhat dif- 

 ferent from that on which it was tried. Hav- 

 ing had frequent occasion to travel, some 

 years since, through parts of the best culti- 

 vated districts in Chester county, Pa., and 

 some other places, I was occasionally, in fact 

 frequently astonished, just before harvest to 

 find the wheat crop an almost total failure, 

 on lands well farmed and highly manured : 

 it was truly sorrowful to see so much labour 

 and value lost, so far as wheat was con 

 cerned, and the query arose strongly, can it 



be that so much more depends on the season 

 being favourable, than on careful farming 

 and high manuring; if it be so, why not 

 put the manure on grass or corn ground, 

 and plough down clover and other gieen 

 crops in the fall, sow wheat, and depend for 

 all the rest on the season? the manure will 

 certainly pay in corn : and at it I went, on 

 quite a small scale at first; thus, clover seed, 

 sowed on wheat in the -spring in the usual 

 manner; after the wheat crop is removed at 

 harvest, close up the field, suffering no stock 

 to run on it, but permitting every thing to 

 grow ; about the first of September plough 

 all down, turning under with a drag chain: 

 this was followed up on the same ground 

 five years in succession, without manure — 

 results: first year, a very moderate crop; 

 second year, a pretty good crop, equal to 

 most of my neighbours, who had put on ma- 

 nure in the usual way, and better than some 

 — third year, quite a good crop, fully equal 

 to neighbouring farmers; here and there a 

 few spots of green grass sod were observ- 

 able, which put the wheat out where they 

 obtained — fourth year, less wheat, and a 

 much increased quantity of green grass — 

 fifth year, very little wheat on a large part 

 of the field, but the green grass ' had ob- 

 tained a most astonishing hold ; so long and 

 tangled was it, that in many places a horse 

 had not strength sufficient to pull the hay 

 rake through it, and raking the stubble was 

 abandoned in the part where the green grass 

 had obtained. Such a result was, to say the 

 least, not expected ; that land which had 

 been ploughed seven years in succession, 

 should become almost matted with natural 

 grass, as it is called, was certainly a curi- 

 osity. I say seven years successively, be- 

 cause a crop of corn and one of wheat, had 

 been taken ofi" before this experiment com- 

 menced. 



This, if it has not already, may become 

 dry and uninteresting if extended ; it con- 

 tains the essence of my experiments in ob- 

 taming crops of wheat ; I therefore close. 



Newcastle co., Delaware. 



Greatest amount of Produce from a 

 given surface. 



The following is the twelfth of Liebig's Familiar 

 Letters on Chemistry. The whole of those letters, as 

 well as his Agricultural and Animal Chemistry, afford 

 an amount of delightful reading for the farmer, which 

 can hardly be obtained of the same hind, anywhere 

 else for the same price.— Ed. 



Having occupied several letters with the 

 attempt to unravel, by means of chemistry, 

 some of the most curious functions of the 



