180 BOARD OF AGRICULTUEE. [Pub. Doc. 



next mornino; after I was married the man wlio was on the 

 place said to me, "You have got here one horse, one yoke 

 of cattle, a few sheep, four cows and a heifer, and you had 

 better sell the heifer, for four cows are all that you can 

 summer on this place and all you can winter, and all that 

 you ought ever to think of keeping." I made no reply to 

 him, but I thought if I lived I might improve somewhat on 

 that. I am now on the same place, with a very little addi- 

 tion, and I can keep and do keep ten horses, and can keep 

 fifty cows and fifty hogs. I keep those cows and that stock 

 a great deal better than those four were kept, and it has all 

 been done simply by hard work and improvements. I have 

 laid some three miles of drain tile on my place, and simply 

 by industry and improvements I have certainly made five 

 spears of grass grow where one grew before. I wanted to 

 ask our essayist if he thought it necessary for successful 

 farming to use chemicals for manure to any great extent, for 

 I think I am farming pretty successfully, and I use but very 

 little. 



Professor Sanborn. Well, it is for me, and I will try 

 and state my reasons. Our soils are far below what ought 

 to l)e their productive capacity, and I do not want to devote 

 a lifetime to developing their fertility, as this gentleman has 

 done with his. I want to bring the soil up in a short time. 

 Chemicals are of great value in carrying on a farm, and you 

 may use them as extensively as you please. I am working 

 on a four hundred-acre farm. I keep about one hundred 

 and sixty acres ploughed each year ; on those I propose to 

 put chemicals liberally, and in the space of ten years I hope 

 to get the farm in good condition. I cannot afibrd not to 

 use them, because they pay me as I go. We have been 

 using them on the farm up there, and we know that they are 

 a successful and profitable plant food. Real farming does 

 not consist in playing round a few acres each year. That is 

 not a bold policy for men who live on these hills. It is not 

 a question of what we can get along with, but how much we 

 can accomplish. 



Mr. A. Pratt (of North Middleborough). I would like 

 to ask Professor Sanborn as to the estimate that was made 

 of chemicals in his essay. Was that applied with farm-yard 



