FIFTEENTH ANNUAL MEETING. 163 



where you can't grow cow peas. Then, in a cold wet season, 

 I would rather plant Soy beans than cow peas. 



Mr. Barnes: I have sowed these Soy beans several times, 

 and I think our first experience was that cold summer, three 

 or four years ago, and we got negative results that year. 

 But about two years later we sowed them on this plain land, 

 a piece that would grow nothing but bent grass, with sand 

 strips in between, absolutely worthless for crop production, 

 and which had had rye on it previously and been ploughed 

 under, and we got a fine growth of these beans, all we could 

 turn under. Professor Henry of Wisconsin was at our place, 

 and I took him to the field, and he commenced pulling up 

 the plants and showing me the nitrogen nodules on the roots. 

 He found they were covered, and he was congratulating me 

 on the nice thing we had in those Soy beans, and at this time 

 we have a magnificent growth of peach trees — several thou- 

 sand of them on there — so I think there was a good deal of 

 virtue in the beans. 



Mr. Lyman : 1 would like to speak of my experience in 

 feeding too much nitrogen to peach orchards. Two years 

 ago I had a block of trees that the scale had done quite an 

 injury to, and had killed a portion of the trees outright. They 

 were sprayed, but the trees were dead, apparently, vet they 

 leaved out and blossomed, but that season died. A part of 

 the orchard was all right, and I used a strong fertilizer, and 

 got a splendid crop. This year, the season was different, and 

 we had a great deal of wet weather. I had a block of trees 

 (about 700) and I thought I would do especially well by them 

 and I would get a finer crop of fruit ofT of that orchar'd, 

 which was ten or twelve years old, so I gave it a strong dose 

 of nitrate of potash and other chemicals, and the crop was 

 almost a failure ; they almost all went on to the ground. The 

 wet weather came at a time when the fruit was ripening and 

 it was a most conspciuous failure. 



Mr. Rogers: I would like to ask Mr. Lyman if he puts 

 his fertilizer on all at one application, or two or three ? 



Mr. Lyman : Two or three. But as to putting on the 

 nitrate of potash or the nitrate of soda. I should want to be 

 careful when that went on, and I am in doubt how late to put 



