70 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



bottom of an eight-incli farrow. On very wet or dry soils, 

 similar results may follow. But such seasons are the effect of 

 meteorological accidents, which cannot be foreseen, and such 

 soils are not those usually selected for cultivation. 



It has been urged in favor of surface-manuring, that " Nature 

 always manures upon the surface." Admitting this to be true, 

 (which we do not,) the answer is, that art is superior to nature, 

 or all civilization is folly. Nature deposits her seeds upon the 

 surface, leaving time and chance to supply the needed covering. 

 We deem it wiser, in planting, to furnish the covering at the 

 outset, leaving nothing to time and chance, which can be made 

 presently certain. The same wisdom should teach us to place 

 our fertilizers in a position to be most easily accessible to the 

 roots, which are the feeding mouths of plants. It is doubtless 

 true that nothing is lost or annihilated ; and manure, exposed 

 upon the most sterile rock, would, through the operation of 

 mechanical forces or chemical affinities, find its place and its 

 use somewhere in the economy of nature. But we cannot 

 afford fertilizers for a continent. Concentration, not diffusion, 

 should be our motto in the use of manures. The burden of the 

 song of all writers upon this subject has been, protection for 

 manure, in the compost heap and in the yard ; protection from 

 the sun, from the wind, from the rains ; and no good reason 

 is apparent why this protection should not be continued in the 

 field, where the facilities for such protection are greatest. 



In each of the experiments under consideration, the succession 

 of crops was nearly .the same — corn, rye, oats, or barley, and, 

 grass. In two of them, plot No. 2, manure cross-ploughed in, 

 gave the greatest value of products ; in one, No. 1, manure 

 ploughed in ; and in one, No. 3, manure harrowed in. The 

 smallest return, in each instance, was from No. 4, manure left 

 upon the surface. As the manure upon these plots, numbered 

 4, was in each case ploughed in for the second crop, it is evident 

 that its waste, by exposure during the first season, amounted to 

 a considerable percentage of its orighial value. If anything 

 has been rendered certain by these experiments, it is that the 

 exposure of manure upon the surface of tilled land, is not good 

 husbandry. 



In Mr. Leonard's first experiment, commencing in 18G0, the 

 order of the plots, as to the value per acre of products, was as 

 follows : 



