ANNUAL MEETING OHIO STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



81 



vation of the soil. That there is no good reason for the present low yield in 

 Ohio has been abundantly proven by the work which is in progress at the Exper- 

 riment Station. 



In selecting land for this Station one farm was chosen which had been in cul- 

 tivation for three-fourths of a century, the last twenty-five years of that time under 

 tenant husbandry. The farm buildings consisted of a large stone house and an 

 excellent barn, such buildings as made Wayne county famous 25 years ago, and 

 which bore evidence to the fact that the land when first brought under cultiva- 

 tion had responded liberally to treatment; but the land itself, as shown when the 

 Station made its purchase, had been brought down to a very low state of pro- 

 ductiveness. Part of this land was an old timothy meadow, which had been 

 cropped and mown until little was left but weeds, and part a wheat stubble 

 which apparently had a similar history. On this land we located art experiment 

 in the cultivation of corn, oct3, wheat, clover and timothy in a 5-year rotation, 

 five tracts of land being laid out in tenth-acre plots, each crop being grown every 

 season. In the first table accompanying is shown the arrangement of some of 

 these plots and their average yield per acre for the last 8 years, the experiment 

 having been in progress for 18 years. 



TABLE I EIGHT-YEAR AVERAGE YIELDS OF CROPS GROWN IN 5- YEAR ROTATION 

 YIELDS AND VALUES PER ACRE. 



The plots in these experiments are 16 feet wide by 272 feet long and are 

 separated by paths two feet wide. Every third plot has been left continuously 

 unfertilized and unmanured from the beginning of the experiment ; otherwise all 

 have had the same treatment as to drainage and cultivation. The upper part 



6* AD. BD. AGR. 



