80 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



guano would produce clover, and the clover turned in would 

 produce wheat and corn, and now abundant crops wave where 

 once the breeze sighed in the stinted pines. We know many 

 good farmers in the state of New York, who rely wholly upon 

 plaster and clover for their corn crops. You may save your 

 green crops if you have peat. But where is the farmer who 

 uses peat when he has it ? I see only here and there a man 

 who esteems it properly ; we almost always hear it said " it is 

 cold stuff." Such persons are in the same error with the man 

 who drinks ardent spirits and thinks excitement as good as 

 strength. Look at Northampton meadows in early spring and 

 your crops are ahead of theirs. Crops there depend more upon 

 the soil, and not so much upon manure. Go again in August 

 and the meadow crops are , ahead of yours. These crops are 

 like two children ; the one has brains and nerves in excess and 

 not much stomach, blood, or muscle ; he learns quick, liates 

 work, and don't care about play ; but if he lives, he has matured 

 at twenty-five or thirty, knows all he will know, has accom- 

 plished his reputation ; he fails any longer to come up to 

 expectation ; he is as great a man as he ever will be. The other 

 has a less active brain, though perhaps as much of it ; he has 

 more blood and muscle ; he eats, works, plays, sleeps and 

 grows. After expectation has been disappointed in the first, he 

 begins to astonish folks ; he arrives at his full ripeness only 

 after the other man is dead, but his harvest of learningy 

 strength, and manly wisdom is more abundant. Your crops, 

 with only stimulating fertilizers, like the first boy, have no 

 organic basis on which the activity can be continued for a great 

 length of time ; but the crop in the meadow throws its thick 

 roots deep into the soil, where there is abundance of the real 

 aliment of the plant, and when the sun comes to the solstice, 

 his energy upon the leaf is answered by the vigorous energy of 

 the root, and the crop grows fastest when your stimulated plant 

 has exhausted all its resources. Potatoes have been stimulated 

 to death. The potato rot, whether it be an insect or a fungus, 

 or some internal organic disposition to decay, is, we believe, 

 due to artificial, stimulating fertilizers. The best potatoes we 

 have seen this year, the cleanest, fairest, the most free from 

 rot, the most perfect every way, were raised on sandy soil, upon 

 which nothing but peat has been placed for several years. 



