190 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



of fino bone and ashes, and under this treatment, I have learned 

 to anticipate heavy crops with full confidence. For corn, or 

 indeed, for any crop, I prefer to plough in the autumn. One 

 of the most important items to be taken into account in the 

 cultivation of the soil is the fineness of the mould in which the 

 seed is placed. A hard, lumpy, imperfectly pulverized field, 

 holding equal amounts of the elements of plant nutrition with 

 one that is fine, will fall sliort usually twenty per cent, in product 

 under the same meteorological conditions. In fall ploughing 

 we secure the disintegrating influence of frost upon our furrows, 

 and this is costless aid in soil cultivation. There are other 

 advantages which I will not stop to enumerate. 



For five consecutive years I have not failed under what I 

 regard as proper soil treatment to secure good crops of wheat. 

 In one season, that of 1867, it fell to twenty-one bushels to the 

 acre, but the others have not gone below thirty. It was, indeed, 

 singular to find what a strong prejudice existed among farmers, 

 against attempts to raise this noble grain. It was urged that it 

 could not . be grown on our soils, they were worn out, did not 

 hold lime or something else necessary to its development ; and 

 further, if it did grow, rust, mildew or insects would destroy 

 the crop before maturity. The first year, I startled a neighbor 

 by growing a crop of plump wheat, thirty-one bushels to the 

 acre, while over the fence he grew a crop of barley, fifteen 

 bushels to the acre. I sold my wheat at -$3.50, while his barley 

 went for 11.40 per bushel. The plan of soil treatment has 

 been to sow broadcast early in the season five hundred pounds 

 of farm superphosphate to the acre, mixed with one hundred 

 pounds of crude nitrate of potassa, or one hundred and fifty 

 pounds of nitrate of soda and fifty pounds of sulphate of mag- 

 nesia. The importance of magnesia in the ash of wheat has 

 been strangely overlooked by chemists and by experimenters, 

 and I regard the employment of a salt holding this element, in 

 dressings for wheat land, as of great utility. Nearly one-eighth 

 of the ash of wheat is made up of magnesia, and as our granitic 

 New England soils cannot well supply it, we must furnish it in 

 our manures. As regards the evil influence of rust upon 

 wheat, I am inclined to the opinion that a well-fed, vigorous 

 plant possesses a posver of resistance to parasitic growths, which 

 is in a considerable degree protective. I do not mean to say 



