ON EXPERIMENTS ON MANURES. 43 



whole weight of her milk from May 14th to date is 1918 

 pounds. She has had no feed except what she has pick- 

 ed from a very dry and poor pasture. I have sold her 

 milk during the summer, and it has been pronounced by 

 those who used it to be the best milk they ever used. 



Yours truly, 



GEORGE SPOFFOED. 

 Georgetown, Sept. 28th, 1841. 



ON EXPERIMENTS ON MANURES. 



The Committee on Experiments on Manures, Report: 

 That in the department assigned to them, two classes 

 of premiums were offered by the Society ; the first for 

 experiments to test the va'ue of the various fossil and 

 other modern manures, and the second, "for the largest 

 quantity of a valuable compost manure, collected and 

 brought into condition for use, on any farm within the 

 county." The latter class comprises three premiums, 

 viz., one of thirty, one of twenty, and one often dollars. 

 In proposing so liberal and so many premiums, the 

 trustees doubtless considered that this branch of agricul- 

 ture was eminently deserving the encouragement of the 

 Society, and that not a few competitors would be stimu- 

 lated to enter the lists. The Committee fully concur in 

 the opinion that the specific and relative value of the 

 many new substances recommended for manures, de- 

 serve, nay, require the test of experiment before it can 

 be expected that the farmers of Essex county, who al- 

 ways look before they leap, will enter very extensively 

 on the use of such substances. The use of these will 

 never supersede that of animal manure, where it can be 

 obtained. But as the amount of animal manure made 

 on most of our farms barely suffices to keep the land in 

 the sam.e heart from year to year, the enterprizing farmer 

 must necessarily look to some foreign source for the 

 means of increasing his crops, and improving the value 

 of his land. Hence, in the neighborhood of the sea, 

 kelp and muscle beds are seized upon with avidity, while 



