A SIDE JOKE. 155 



College farm, and he is here, and will correct me if I do not 

 report the experiment aright ; for the farm superintendent 

 undertook to play a very nice game or ruse on the professor 

 of agriculture. About twenty acres of corn were grown on 

 the farm this year. The corn-field selected was good, warm, 

 sandy loam soil, in good condition. One field of ten acres 

 was manured with about twenty loads of good barn-yard 

 manure to the acre, ploughed in. Half of the field was then 

 top-dressed with a compost of night-soil, harrowed in with a 

 Randall harrow. The other half of this ten-acre field, after 

 having been ploughed and properly tilled, was manured in 

 the hill with Bradley's XL superphosphate. The other corn- 

 field and the farm had about twenty loads of good barn-cellar 

 manure to the acre, ploughed in, and Bradley's XL super- 

 phosphate put in the hill. 



Question. How large were the loads ? 



Prof. Stockbridge. The loads were drawn by a pair of 

 2,600 horses, — all they could put on, which means a pretty 

 good load. 



Question. How many cubic feet, do you suppose? 



Prof. Stockbridge. Probably a little less than half a cord. 

 That is about the amount of manure put on to each field. 

 Those fields were ploughed and planted in season. Every- 

 thing was done in order to those corn-fields. Then, in order 

 to test the professor of agriculture, the farm superintendent 

 went into the market and bought the Stockbridge fertilizer for 

 corn. Not such as I make. He did not come to the corn- 

 house, where I mix it; he did not want to let me know any- 

 thing about it ; but he went and bought it already prepared, 

 so that he should have such materials as others had. He 

 applied this to land that no farmer would say was fit to plant 

 corn in. It was not corn-land, but cold land, mucky land. 

 He ploughed it on the seventh day of June, after the other 

 corn was up and hoed. On this land he put the fertilizer for 

 seventy-five bushels of. corn, and harrowed it in with a Ran- 

 dall harrow, having ploughed the land about six inches deep. 

 There was just four-fifths of an acre of land, by measure, 

 exactly. He then gave the lot up to nature, and said, "Go 

 it!" He only hoed it once with a hoe; cultivated it twice, 

 and, last week, I think, he cut and harvested the corn there 



