52 



THE LANCASTER FARMER. 



Committees for 1881. 



General Fruit Committee. — E. Satterthwait, 

 Montgomery county, chairman ; A. R. Sprout, 

 Lycoming county; Joseph Lewis, Jr., Dela- 

 ware county; Dr. .Tames Calder, Centre 

 county; J. O. Martin, Franklin county; W. 

 M. Pannebaker, Mifflin county; J. V. Gar- 

 retson, Adams county; W. L. Shaeffer, Phil- 

 adelphia; J. S. Murdoch, Sr., Allegheny 

 county; H. S. Rupp, Cumberland county; S. 

 Stevenson, Lackawanna county; Bassler 

 Boyer, Lebanon county; T. A. "Woods, 

 Dauphin connty; J. W. Pyle, Chester county; 

 A. S. Shimer, Northampton county; Casper 

 Hiller, Lancaster county; Peter Lint, York 

 county; A. S. Sheller, Union county; C. T. 

 Fox, Berks county; H. Leh, Lehigh county; 

 F. F. Merceron, Columliia connty. 



Committee on Nomenclature.— Joshxh Hoopes, 

 Chester county, chairman; L. S. Reist, Lan- 

 caster county; J. ttiblierd Bartram, Chester 

 county; S. W. Noble, Chester county; Ezra 

 High, IBerks county. 



Cmnmitteeon Florinilture and Arboriculture. 

 — Charles H. Miller, Philadelphia, chairman; 

 P. C. Hiller, Lancaster county;. John C. Hep- 

 ler, Berks county; Geo. Achelis, Chester 

 county; W. P. Brinton, Lancaster county. 



Committeeon Orcharding. — Thomas M. Har- 

 vey, Chester county, chairman; Dr. ,T. H. 

 Funk, Berks county; J. G. Engle, Lancaster 

 county; H. F. Clark, Columbia county; Jacob 

 Heyser, Franklin county. 



Committee on Entomology. — S. S. Rathvon, 

 Lancaster county, chairman; J. S. Stauffer, 

 Lancaster county; Herman Strecker, Berks 

 county. 



Committee on Arrangement and Reception. — 

 E. G. Fahnestock, Adams county, chairman; 

 Raphael Sherfy, Adams county; II. J. Stable, 

 Adams county; Isaac Herretter, Adams 

 county; E. B. Engle, Lancaster county. 



Essays. 



CHEMISTRY OF SOILS.* 



I fully and conscientiously believe that the 

 time is not far distant when all farmers will 

 have full confidence in chemistry, and will be 

 able by making an analysis of their soils to 

 readily determine the necessary additions to 

 be made to them to raise any crops suited to 

 their longitudinal locality. In a few years 

 more no farmer will be so ignorant of this sci- 

 ence as to need to test one after another of a 

 long list of manm-es in order to determine the 

 proper requisite to his land. To illustrate it, it 

 is now well known that one vegetable product 

 requires largely a phospliale, another a sul- 

 phate, another an aramoniate. Hence when 

 the farmer is about raising any product re- 

 quiring either of the above chemicals, he will 

 examine his soils and add any deficiencies. 

 To- again illustrate ; Putty is composed of 

 linseed oil and whiting, and no other tvv'o 

 simples can be united to make the compounds 

 of putty. Charcoal, sulphur and saltpetre sep- 

 arately are non-exiilosives.but ujiited in proper 

 proportions, gunpowder is the compound, 

 which is a terrible explosive. 



Nitric acid and glycerine separately are 

 harmless substances ; mixed together, nitro- 

 glycerine is the compound, and it is a fear- 

 fully powerful explosive ; chloric acid and 

 quicksilver mixed in equal parts, in a fire in a 

 crucible, will majje calomel ; if two ounces of 

 chloric acid is mixed with one ounce of quick- 

 silver in the same way, an entirely new and 

 poisonous compound is made, viz., corrosive 

 sublimate. If you mix nitrate of soda and 

 hyposulphate of soda together, both of which 

 are intensely bitter, they will produce a very 

 sweet substance. If you rub together equal 

 quantities of glauber salts and nitrate of 

 ammonia, the two solids will become liquids. 

 The malic acid in the grape in July becomes 

 grape sugar in August. Now, I have intro- 

 duced these chemical facts to prove that the 



*Reod befox-e the Lancaster Connty Agricnltural ftnd 

 Horticultural Society by Dr. C. A. Oreene, 



laws of chemistry never change. Tlie laws of 

 formation of vegetable matter also never 

 changes. Corn to-day requires the same con- 

 stituents in the soil for its development that 

 it did two hundred years ago, and if you do 

 not provide the suitable requirements you 

 cannot raise good corn. The best baker in 

 the world is the scientific one, that is tlie one 

 who makes his dough up after certain well- 

 known laws, and the best baker in the world 

 may try to make good bread from stale poor 

 flour, and he will always try in vain. The 

 word science is very greatly disliked by some 

 farmers, but they are disliking their best 

 friend ; they are ignorant of its true meaning, 

 and all through their lives every good result 

 they obtain is only a scientific fact. Science 

 is a bundle of experiences tied together. The 

 farmer who writes down in an almanac or in 

 a book the good results of certain experi- 

 ments he has made, is collecting scientific 

 items. The most successful raiser of crops 

 has in some way become the most scientific. He 

 has separated the wheat from the chaff of life; 

 and all the successful facts he picks up in a 

 long life may be written in a small book that 

 can be read and learned by another farmer in a 

 few weeks. 



Let me give another illustration premised 

 by a fact : One of the immutable laws of the 

 inscrutable controller of this world is that in 

 the vegetable and animal kingdoms there 

 shall be no rest; growth and decay, formation 

 and disintegration are ever going on, now to- 

 morrow and forever, and the most intelligent 

 farmer is the one who shall find out the 

 simplest and cheapest manner of replenishing 

 or restoring that portion of the soil abstracted 

 by the vegetable growth^ou his farm : now 

 for the information. Supposing a certain 

 portion of your land is very claj'ey and 

 another part very sandy, by a union of the 

 two you can produce, witli other additions, an 

 elegant loam. The seeds that have died in 

 the clay would have sprouted and born good 

 results in the mixture. This union of Uie 

 two soils is a scientific fact that somebody 

 had to first learn from experience. There is 

 not a farmer's tool to-day in America but 

 what is an improvement on the first tools 

 made; this is the result of science. Compare 

 the wooden plough of the Africans with the 

 best varieties of to day; the scythe of our 

 Pilgrim fathers with the mowing ma- 

 cliines of to-day, the stage coach with 

 the railroad; the letter carrier of George 

 ■Washington with] the Atlantic telegraph 

 cable of to-day, and in a few years, if 

 alive, I shall write an appendix to this article, 

 and say the farmer of 1880 with the farmer of 

 1900. Then testing fifty fertilizers to find the 

 one required on his farm, while to-day (year 

 1900) he selects from among the list the re- 

 quired ones after analyzing his soils. The 

 changes effected are the result of scientific 

 experiments, and this knowledge is carried 

 all over our land by the thousand and one 

 papers and magazines. Papers like The 

 Lancaster Faejier and JiuIiVr Agricul- 

 turalist are doing much to perfect farming. 

 In 1704 only one newspaper was published in 

 the United States ; now almost every hamlet 

 and town of America is supplied with its 

 newspaper. One of the great misfortunes of 

 to-day is that these scientific facts are so 

 widely spread about in so many books, organs, 

 magazines and papers ; they should be col- 

 lected together in a series of agricultural 

 books, easily read and understood, and printed 

 at such costs that all fiirmers could purchase 

 them. 



Another illustration : In land full of lime, 

 the addition of more lime would destroy the 

 formative principle ; an excess of any chemi- 

 cal in the soil will act prejudicial to vegetable 

 growths, the results will be sotnetimes ex- 

 cessive, worthless or fungus excrescences. 

 Pure urine thrown on plants will kill them ; 

 mixed in water or loam and added, in many 

 cases, it will rapidly increase the formation of 

 good sap. Ben Franklin, in his almanac 

 called Pooi- Richard, says, "Constantly tak- 

 ing out of the meal bag, and never putting in. 



will soon come to the bottom." So growing 

 corn or wheat on the best soils will, after a 

 time, take out the necessary] chemicals, and 

 the crops will cease growing. 



Contributions. 



DUNGHEAP LIQUOR. 



Every now\and then new ideas are advanc- 

 ed ,_that completely upset our own precon- 

 ceived ideas of the subject, or make us modify 

 them in a greater or less degree. A case in 

 point is to beifound in the March number of 

 the Farmer where part of an article under 

 the heading of "Rotten Manure" is copied 

 from the Germantown Telegraph. 



The gist of the article is this : 



At a meeting of farmers and fruit growers 

 one of them advanced the idea'^lhat manure 

 was not injured by having the black ^water 

 run off. 



I doubt if many will be found to agree with 

 the speaker, for it has been a standiiig injunc- 

 tion that manure should be covered so as to 

 prevent leaching, or if not covered that the 

 yard should be so formed as to hold this same 

 black water. 



According to some tables at hand the com- 

 position of "dungheap liquor" is given as U 

 pounds nitrogen, 5 pounds potash and a few 

 ounces of phosphoric acid in every 1000 

 pounds of the liquor. This would be about 

 f pound nitrogen and 2^ pounds potash for 

 each large barrel, the size of such as coal oil 

 and molasses is now received in. As only the 

 mdre soluble parts of the manure woiild be 

 washed out, and these more soluble parts are 

 more valuable because of their quicker ac- 

 tion, it follows that a barrel of the liquorl 

 would be worth something like 40 cents. Itf 

 is scarcely to be supposed that the speakerl 

 would claim that a heap of manure would bel 

 just as valuable after a number of barrels of ] 

 this liquor had' leached away. The leaching 

 of course implies time, and in such time the 

 manure becomes more thoroughly rotted and 

 of smaller compass, and as such a load of it 

 would be worth more than before leaching, 

 but there would not be so many loads as be- 

 fore. If manure was to be purchased by the 

 load there would be no objection to some 

 leaching, as then it would be more thoroughly 

 rotted and be less bulky, if kept in open heaps, 

 as is most usual, but if purchased by lump, 

 more value would be received without leach- 

 ins, but the extra amount of handling re- 

 quired would perhaps counterbalance the ad-j 

 ditional value. 



Using Absorbents. 



It has been the custom to recommend the! 

 employment of dry earth or other absorbent,! 

 to be used in preserving the manure of poultry] 

 fqr the purpose of preventing the escape of I 

 ammonia. Dry earth has also been used| 

 more or less in stables and in earth closets. 

 Yet a few years ago Col. "Waring had an ar- 

 ticle in the American Agriculturist, in which! 

 it was stated that dry earth that had beenj 

 re-used a number of times did not show any] 

 apprecialjle gain iu the amount of ammonia ] 

 contained, and that in the opinion of the| 

 writer the admission of air through the me- 

 dium of the dry earth decomposed the ammo- 

 nia that may have been added from time to] 

 time. 



It is important to know the real truth ofl 

 the case, and the editor of the AgriculturistX 

 informs us that observations were being madej 

 in order to determine as to the correctness ofl 

 Col. Waring's deductions ; the editor also! 

 thought that chamber slops that would bej 

 poured into a barrel containing earth would! 

 not be likely to lose ainmonia, because the| 

 earth would be kept moist by the slops. No- 

 thing has yet been published as to the con- 

 clusions arrived at, and it is prebably one of 

 those problems that take time to solve in 

 satisfactory manner. 



Dr. Sturtevant, of the Scientific Farmer, isi 

 of the opinion that dry earth is useful, andl 

 that Col. Waring did not sufficiently take! 



