84 ON EXPERIMENTS ON MANURES. 



ASA NELSON'S STATEMENT, 



To the Committee on the Cultivation of Crops : 



Gentlemen: — I offer for premium a crop of wheat. 

 The land is gravelly loam; it had been laid down seven 

 years. The two past years it had been planted with 

 corn, applying about eight coi'ds of barn yard manure a 

 year. 1 ploughed it the first ofMay, and spread on about 

 eight cords of manure, sowed one and a half bushels of 

 wheat on one acre and a quarter and sixteen rods of 

 ground. The crop when harvested measured 31| bush- 

 els of good wheat. My manner of formerly prepai'ing 

 my wheat for sowing has been by applying much lime, 

 but this season I was not situated so as to come to it ea- 

 sily, and losing my belief of the utility of it in a measure, 

 in the preparation thereof I used nothing but ashes. 

 The great secret of raising wheat in this vicinity, is, in 

 my opinion, to have the weeds well subdued the pre- 

 vious years, and the land well manured ; the profit 

 arising from it will be greater than from the cultivation 

 of oats or barley. The seed which was sowed on this 

 land, was Black Sea Wheat. 



ASA NELSON. 



Georgetown, Nov. 7, 1843. 



EXPERIMENTS ON MANURES. 



The Committee, consisting of Moses Newell, of West 

 Newbury, Wm. S. Mariand, of Andover, and myself, to 

 whom, at the meeting of the Trustees in December was 

 referred the statement of Joseph How, Esq., of Methu- 

 en, of the continuation of his experiments on manures, 

 have carefully examined the same, and are of opinion 

 that Mr How is entitled to credit for the care and atten- 

 tion with which his experiments have been conducted. 

 In this, as in several other communications heretofore 

 made by Mr How, he has shown himself to be a farmer 

 of the right stamp, willing to try to do something more 

 than his fathers have done before hi.j. We do not dis- 



