45 



was very much sward-bound. I began on the worst part of the 

 ground, and the person employed to sow it with plaster, instead of 

 three bushels on an acre, as I directed, put the three bushels on a 

 fourth of an acre. The cftect was so surprising, that when the 

 Trustees of the Society were at my house, I asked them separately 

 to say where the plaster began and where it ended, and no one 

 failed to point out the precise limits. The crop was double that 

 of the rest of the same piece of ground, quadruple that of the pre- 

 ceding year. 



" It is now rendered certain, by the experience of many, that 

 the neighborhood of the salt water forms no obstacle to its use." — 

 Agr. Bepos.for 1816, vol. 4, p. 272. 



In the generations before ours, the leading farmers of this 

 country used plaster largely, and with satisfactory results. But 

 lately little attention has been paid to it, and it is difficult to find 

 men whoso testimony is decisively in its favor. It is possible 

 that it deserves the praises which our predecessors bestowed upon 

 it, and that it has been supplanted by guano and other new ma- 

 nures. If it is thought Avorth while to continue its use, two things 

 should be kept in mind : first, that it will answer better on dry, 

 light or gravelly loams than on other soils ; secondly, that its 

 effects must be waited for patiently, because it is not soluble in 

 less than five hundred times its weight of water. Hence, if ap- 

 plied to grass land or pastures, it should be spread in the fall or 

 winter, that the melting snow and early rains may dissolve it, and 

 thus bring it in contact with the roots. 



On no manure, not even guano, is there such a variety of opin- 

 ions as to the mode of its operation. Nothing but numerous and 

 long continued experiments can determine the vexed questions, 

 both of its value and of the manner in which it produces its 

 results. 



Farmers continue to use plaster, both in hills and as top dress- 

 ing ; yet there are few substances employed as manure that are less 

 satisfactory. We have asked many farmers whether they knew 

 aoii/ results to follow from its use. Most of them replied, none, 

 either good or bad. Some thought it might have fixed the am- 

 monia in the manure or the atmosphere. Others had reclaimed 

 old pastures by a liberal use of plaster. In the State of New 

 York, a farmer believes that he saved his potatoes from rot in 



