86 EXACT AND EXPERIMENTAL AGRICULTURE. 



who have made the most experiments, that is who have had the 

 most experience and the longest practice. But pei'haps you 

 will say, let the rich make experiments, we have not the means. 

 This is not so ; and the farmers of moderate circumstances, and 

 who work in their own fields, are the very persons to make the 

 experiments, because they are better able to watch the result ; 

 and, as they cannot afford to lose and are most concerned to 

 make their agriculture profitable, will feel the stronger interest 

 in the progress of such experiments. 



Now very extensive or expensive experiments are not what 

 we recommend to farmers of small means ; but small experi- 

 ments are perfectly within their reach, and the instruction to be 

 gained from them on a small scale may be equally valuable and 

 decisive as from those on a large scale. The effect of lime upon 

 your farms, or upon the different soils to be found in different 

 parts of them ; applied to corn or wheat, to potatoes, to grass ; 

 used in its air-slacked or unslacked state ; how to be applied ; 

 when to be applied ; all these are very important inquiries ; and 

 may be as easily ascertained by the use of a single cask, which 

 may cost you a dollar, as by the use of fifty ; and in any event 

 you are certain that the lime is not wholly lost. So too with 

 gypsum and ashes. Some of the most important points in regard 

 to the application of these powerful manures remain to be set- 

 tled by experiments. The result of such experiments may be of 

 great importance to you ; how they are to be applied ; in what 

 quantity, at what season ; in what form, to what crops ; under 

 what circumstances they lose their efficacy ; what kinds of plas- 

 ter are to be chosen, the dark or the pink colored ; how ashes 

 are to be applied, whether leeched or unleeched ; the compara- 

 tive value of wood ashes, and of peat-ashes, with which your 

 county abounds ; all these important points can be determined 

 only by experiment ; and these experiments on such a scale as 

 to decide them may be made by the smallest farmers and at 

 almost no expense. So too as to the application of other ma- 

 nures ; by the most simple experiments and without cost you 

 can decide for yourselves the long mooted questions whether 

 manures are best applied in a green or a rotten state, in the hill 



