220 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



can get any fertilizer that will enable us to do it, of course 

 it is sometimes as convenient to use one piece a second year 

 as it is the first. That was why I asked the question. 



The Chairman. I have planted sweet corn for fodder 

 upon the same piece of ground for eight years, and I think 

 I had as heavy a crop this year as I ever had. I put on 

 nothing except stable manure. 



Mr. BowKER. I think that can be done every year, but I 

 think that it is judicious to rotate, not so much because some 

 element in the soil has been exhausted, but because some 

 plants root deeper than others. Corn is a shallow feeder. 

 Follow that with some deep-rooted plant, like clover, and it 

 goes down into the soil and takes up the nitrogen and other 

 plant food which has gone down deeper than the roots of the 

 corn plant. Some crops are conservators of nitrogen, — 

 clover belongs to that class, — and they gather it from the 

 lower strata. That is why I believe in rotation of crops ; 

 but you can grow corn year after year on the same land. 

 This gentleman (Mr. Taft) says he knows of a place where 

 corn has been raised for fifty years on the same piece. 



Mr. CiiEEVER. There is one more reason why corn can- 

 not be raised profitably on the same ground eternally. 

 Every kind of vegetation is liable to some form of disease. 

 Corn smut is a serious pest in many localities and in many, 

 fields, and where corn is raised year after year on the same 

 ground, it often becomes very difiicult to get a crop on the 

 land ; the percentage of smut increases each year^ Dr. 

 Sturtevant, I think, found that difficulty in Framingham, in 

 raising corn several years in succession on the same piece. 



Mr. Gilbert. In one of our cemeteries there is a large 

 lot of maples that need trimming. At what season of the 

 year should trees of that kind be trimmed, having limbs as 

 large or larger than your arm ? 



Mr. Hill of Amesbury. My opinion would be, in the 

 fall. Those trees ought not to have been left until the limbs 

 became as large as you speak of before they were removed. 

 I would not remove them all at one time ; trim them up 

 gradually. The trees might be trimmed at any time from 

 now to the first of March. I would not cut ofl:' too much of 

 the growth, as the check would be too severe. 



