GUANO YEAR AFTER YEAR. 233 



these substances in the lull or broadcast, as may be convenient. 

 While I am on guano, lot me say, as a little addenda to what 

 was said this morning, that one farmer in our vicinity has used 

 it, I understand, for eleven years. That has been his great 

 article; he has used scarcely anything else. I should expect 

 that, used for so long a time, it would injure his land, and 

 gradually reduce his crops, but instead of that, he has the 

 reputation of carrying to Boston the best potatoes that go into 

 that market. His success has had the effect to induce his 

 neighbors to follow the same course. One of them was over to 

 my place a year ago, when I was buying large quantities of 

 stable manure. I asked him, " How much do you buy ? " Said 

 he, " I haven't used any for years." " What do you use ? " 

 " I use guano. I carry all my crops through with guano ; two 

 wagon-loads manure my farm." These are very cautious men ; 

 they have felt their way along, and they have used this manure 

 for years without any injurious effects. I have known of men 

 who have raised enormous crops for one or two years on night- 

 soil, and everything seemed to be going on successfully, but all 

 at once there was a break, the land baked up, and they were 

 obliged to go back to stable manure to bring the land back to 

 its former condition. I have known such things done on land 

 in places where fish pomace was very abundant. My explana- 

 tion of it is, that some stimulus is given, by which certain ingre- 

 dients in the soil are exhausted. In these cases where guano 

 has been used for a number of years, I presume the quantity 

 used was not so liberal. 



Application of Manure. — We apply the manure for bed crops 

 either before ploughing or after ploughing. Our general plan, 

 however, is, to plough the land first. If we can give it a full 

 ploughing, wc prefer' to do it, unless it is an onion bed, already 

 stuffed with manure ; in that case we prefer not to plough in 

 the fall, because a vast amount of the manure is likely to be 

 blown off. In the spring, we do not plough as deep as in the 

 fall. After ploughing, we cultivate and work the soil up very 

 fine, then apply the manure, and then put on our small one- 

 horse plough and turn that luider, with very narrow furrows. . 

 Then the men follow with rakes, stretching off in a line, so that 

 they can work easily, and make the bed as smooth as a floor. 

 We then have a beautiful seed bed. If we desire to put on any 



30 



