120 TALKS OX MANUIiES. 



the plaster and clover. Do not quote me as saying this, but come 

 and see the farms hereabouts, and talk with our farmers." 



Of course I went, and had a capital time. Mr. Geddes has a 

 magnificent farm of about 400 acres, some four miles from 

 Syracuse. It is in high condition, and is continually improving, 

 and this is due to growing large and frequent crops of clover, and 

 to good, deep plowing, and dean and tJwrough culture. 



We drove round among the farmers. " Here is a man," said 

 Mr. G., " who run in debt $45 per acre for his farm. He has edu- 

 cated his family, paid off his debt, and reports his net profits at 

 from $2,000 to $2,500 a year on a farm of 90 acres ; and this is 

 due to clover. You see he is building a new barn, and that does 

 not look as though his land was running down under the system." 

 The next farmer we came to was also putting up a new barn, and 

 another farmer was enlarging an old one. " Now, these farmers 

 have never paid a dollar for manure of any kind except plaster, 

 and their lands certainly do not deteriorate." 



From Syracuse, I went to Geneva, to sec our old friend John 

 Johnston. "Why did you not tell me you were coming?" he 

 said. "I would have met you at the cars. But I am right glad 

 to see you. I want to show you my wheat, where I put on 250 

 Ibs. of guano per acre last fall. People here don't know that I 

 used it, and you must not mention it. It is grand." 



I do not know that I ever saw a finer piece of wheat. It was the 

 Diehl variety, sown 14th September, at the rate of 1 bushels per 

 acre. It was quite thick enough. One breadth of the drill was 

 sown at the rate of two bushels per acre. This is earlier. " But," 

 said Mr. J., "the other will have larger heads, and will yield 

 more." After examining the wheat, we went to look at the piles 

 of muck and manure in the barn-yard, and from these to a splen- 

 did crop of timothy. "It will go 2 tons of hay per acre," said 

 Mr. J., " and now look at this adjoining field. It is just as good 

 land naturally, and there is merely a fence between, and yet the 

 grass and clover are so poor as hardly to be worth cutting." 



" What makes the difference ? " I asked. 



Mr. Johnston, emphatically, " Manure." 



The poor field did not belong to him ! 



Mr. Johnston's farm was originally a cold, wet, clayey soil. Mr. 

 Geddes' land did not need draining, or very little. Of course, land 

 that needs draining, is richer after it is drained, than land that is 



