MANURES. 75 



so uniform in quality and texture that its products, if entered 

 for premium, could be safely computed from the yield of its best 

 or of its poorest rood. 



Mr. Benson's plots were each thirty-two rods long and one 

 wide, No. 3 being the central one. There is nothing in his state- 

 ment of the mode of ploughing to indicate any undue advantage 

 to this plot, by turning upon it soil or manure from the adjacent 

 ones ; but the whole field, as it now lies, forms a sort of water- 

 shed, being highest in the middle and lowest at the sides. If this 

 is, to any extent, owing to its having been ploughed with back 

 furrows in the centre, either during, or previous to the occu- 

 pancy of the present proprietor, inequality of soil must be the 

 .inevitable result. 



Accidental inequalities in soils arise from various causes, and 

 their existence is sometimes unsuspected till the land is brought 

 under tillage. The maintenance of a partition-fence during a 

 series of years, in the days when sheep were found on every 

 farm, seeking the sides of such fertces for protection alike from 

 heat and cold, has induced an improved condition of the soil in 

 its immediate vicinity, apparent on cultivation long after all 

 traces of its existence had disappeared. The peculiar produc- 

 tiveness of a particular strip of land, apparently similar to that 

 adjoining, was observed by the writer, when it was first tilled 

 under his notice, thirty years ago. Inquiries made at that time 

 elicited the fact that, more than twenty years before, the ashes 

 from a family leach tub were carelessly deposited thereon, not 

 for purposes of fertilization, but as the most convenient method 

 of getting rid of a worthless incumbrance. These particular 

 causes of accidental inequalities in soils are not mentioned as 

 probably operative in this case, but to show the difficulty of 

 selecting an acre of land of equal quality throughout. That the 

 excess of products on plot No. 3 over plot No. 4, in this experi- 

 ment, was due to some inherent or accidental superiority of its 

 soil, would seem as probable, to say the least, as that it was the 

 effect of a single harrowing. 



These suggestions are made, not because this experiment 

 presents results at variance with a favorite theory, but because 

 the award of so large a premium as one hundred dollars, by 

 such a body of agriculturists as those constituting the Massa- 

 chusetts Society of Agriculture, influenced though they doubt- . 



