AND RURAL ECONOMIST. 203 



unless the land is wanted for a spring crop the next year, 

 after clover seed, at the rate of one, two, or even three 

 bushels per acre. After harvest the young clover ought not 

 to be pastured much, if any ; the next year the clover is 

 suffered to grow as large as it can be and be well turned over, 

 which is then done, the ground fallowed and the wheat sown ; 

 the next year sow the clover seed and plaste ", and so on 

 from year to year ad infinitum, the land always getting better, 

 as is supposed by those who practise this method. Plaster we 

 think should be sown in pasture. An old farmer, and one 

 who has proved his skill by making a fortune at the business, 

 and who now tills nearly five hundred acres, told me that a 

 ton of plaster sown on ten .acres of pasture would make it 

 yield as much as fifteen acres under the like circumstances 

 without plaster.' 



J. Spicer, in Goodsell's Farmer, says, ' When I apply 

 plaster to corn, which I have done for nearly three years 

 past, I mix it with one-half leached ashes, as they are leached 

 for common family use ; put it in a cart and shovel and mix 

 it well. I then put one gill to the hill immediately ifter the 

 first hoeing, and the same thing over after the second hoe- 

 ing. I have tried the same quantity of clear plaster, side 

 and side, twice, and find the mixture to produce the greatest 

 effects.' 



The Hon. J. Lowell, in an article published in the New 

 England Farmer, vol. v. p. 1, contradicts an idea which has 

 been generally prevalent, that gypsum is of no use to lands 

 near the sea-coast, and observes as follows : 



' I shall set out with the fact, that piaster has been used 

 with success on lands on the sea-coast of France, where the 

 south-west wind, the prevalent one in summer in that country, 

 brings with it the ocean air : and in our country, in Massa- 

 chusetts for example, the prevalent winds do not bring with 

 them an atmosphere filled with saline particles. It cannot 

 therefore be the vicinity to the sea which renders gypsum 

 inert and inefficacious with us. The cause of its inefiicacy 

 near the sea-coast must therefore be sought for in something 

 else ; in the nature of our soil, perhaps already sufficiently 

 imbued with the constituent parts of gypsum, or in our more 

 free use of stable manure, which furnishes the plants with all 

 the food they require. 



' I have been in a constant and invariable course of ex- 

 periments on plaster, and these are the results. It seems 

 to be of no use, ever, to clover, on low meadow lands ; of no 



