376 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



not typical grass land — at the rate of rather more than 3 

 tons per acre, at an annual fci'tilizer cost, covering the bone- ' 

 black and muriate of potash, of about $5.50 per acre. The 

 land, however, has been limed twice during the fifteen years, 

 at a cost for each liming of about $6 or $7 per acre. We 

 have, then, an annual cost for lime at the rate of about $1 

 per acre, making the total annual cost of the fertilizers used 

 about $(>.50. For this small expenditure we have a crop in 

 the fifteenth year of rather over 3 tons. In the same field 

 we have a similar plot, to which the same quantities of dis- 

 solved bone-black, muriate of potash and lime are annually 

 applied, and in addition nitrate of soda at the rate of 160 

 pounds per acre. Here the two crops last year amounted to 

 7,600 pounds of well-made hay. We have thus an increase 

 of some 1,500 pounds of hay as the result of the employ- 

 ment of 1()0 pounds of nitrate of soda, which would cost 

 about $4. The use of the nitrate in addition to the bone- 

 black and potash, therefore, is clearly profitable. It will be 

 asked, however. Whence comes the nitrogen required by the 

 grasses, where the dissolved bone-black, muriate of potash 

 and lime annually are used? The answer undoubtedly is. 

 From decaying clover roots and stubble. Clover thrives 

 imder this system of manuring. It draws nitrogen freely 

 from the air. The clovers, however, are not long-lived 

 })lants. On their death and decay the nitrogen which had 

 become a part of their tissues becomes available to the grasses 

 which follow. By liberal Ui?e of phosphates, potash and lime, 

 then, we can, if we will, in the first place produce heavy 

 crops of clover and lat(n" heavy mixed crops of grass and 

 clover, the grass feeding upon the products of the decay of 

 the earliest clover plants. That this will prove the most 

 [)i()fita])le system of manuring does not follow, for, as indi- 

 cated by the comparison above made, yet greater profit was 

 consecjuent in the experiment under consideration from a 

 combination of nitrate of soda with the other materials. 



The JVecessit// for Lime. — The fact that an ai)plication 

 of lime is fretjuently necessary in order to bring soil into 

 sucii condition that clovers will thrive was particularly cni- 

 phasi/cd in the first article upon the hay cr()p. The residts 



