26 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



this shop have been used for the past three years at the rate 

 of about fifteen hundred bushels annually, which are spread 

 broadcast, but never with animal manure of any kind, lest the 

 ashes should cause the manure to part with its ammonia, 

 either in the compost heap or open field, more rapidly than is 

 required to feed the plant. 



The manure from a stable, where six horses have been kept, 

 has been added'to my compost heap at a cost of about thirty- 

 six dollars annually. 



I have used for my different crops, though mostly for cabbages, 

 about two hundred bushels of common unleached wood ashes 

 per annum for the last three years with very signal success. 

 But few of the phosphates have been used on my farm. A few 

 hundred pounds of the super-phosphate of lime were used on 

 corn last year ; and up to the first of August the effect was very 

 apparent, but at harvest it was quite impossible to distinguish 

 any difference in the crop. This season guano, after being mixed 

 with five times its bulk of fine mould, was used in the hill at 

 the rate of five hundred pounds to the acre ; but for some 

 cause the corn did not come up, and planting over again 

 brought it so late in the season that the experiment was 

 any thing but satisfactory. This experiment was on corn 

 planted on an old worn-out pasture where no other manure 

 was used. I put the guano on the one part, and wood ashes, at 

 the rate of fifty bushels per acre, was put in the hill on the 

 other part, with very satisfactory results on corn and potatoes. 



About one hundred rods of bank wall on the road side have 

 been set within five years at a cost of about two dollars per 

 rod ; no inner walls have been built or reset. I believe that 

 most of our Worcester county farmers have built ten rods where 

 they really wanted one. This has been continued from year 

 to year, and the whole farm divided and subdivided until the 

 walls cannot be reset for what the farm would sell for. But 

 Mr. A. asks what he shall do with the surface stones on his 

 fields ; Mr. B. thinks his cattle do best by change of pasture ; 

 and Mr. C. docs not know how he shall get the after feed in 

 his mowing field when a part is planted to corn. 



I would state in reply to Mr. A., that in nine cases out of 

 ten the large stones on land can be sunk much cheaper than 



