182 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



some barn-yard manure, as far as the first year's products are 

 concerned. I had a neighbor who kept one old horse and a 

 cow. He had a meadow of four acres that he cut evciy year, 

 and run the hay through his old horse during the winter, and 

 fed his cow on better hay, and he used to take the manure 

 from his horse and put it on his land. He never fed any 

 grain. Is it likely that an experiment tried with that manure 

 would show the same result as an experiment tried with 

 manure from good stock, fed on good hay and grain? 



Now, as far as these experiments are concerned, I am going 

 to speak of number one in this matter, simply because we want 

 to talk about what we know, rather than what we gness at, and 

 I want to make this statement. In our town there are some 

 six or eight men who have made careful and thorough experi- 

 ments with regard to commercial fertilizers, during the past 

 year, and I give you this as the result for one. I looked 

 around for an acre of land, and I wanted to take land that 

 was as near waste land as possible. I did not find exactly 

 what I wanted, but I found an acre of land with gravelly 

 knolls in it. The soil was a sandy loam. What the subsoil 

 would be called, I have great question. It is leachy land. My 

 neighbor, Mr. Kuowlton, lent me an acre of land for this ex- 

 periment. It was in grass, and I asked him what the crop was 

 the year before. He said, "Not enough to pay for the mow- 

 ing. You may have as much of that land as you have a mind 

 to cultivate." I proposed to take just one acre. I went on 

 and measured off an acre exactly. It was ploughed six inches 

 and a half deep, aud turned over very handsomely, there 

 being no stone on the land, except those small gravel stones. 

 A light roller was put on, the sod was all rolled down, and 

 then harrowed with a Randall harrow, and the fertilizer sowed 

 on the land. I took a great deal of pains to have the fertil- 

 izer equally distributed over the acre. Then the harrow was 

 put on, and it was thoroughly harrowed, and then the rows 

 marked out with a plough, three feet apart each way. There 

 was nothing put into the hill, aud nothing put on the land 

 save the fertilizer, according to the Stockbridge formula, 

 which cost me $28.50 on the ground. Then the corn was put 

 in. It came up rapidly, though not so rapidly as it would if 

 I could have put some fertilizer or manure in the hill ; for 



