VIII TALKS OX MAXTJRES. 



sown. The superphosphate is not mixed with the wheat, but 

 it drops into the saiue tubes witli the wheat, and is sown witli 

 it in the same drill mai k. In this way, the supei-jihospliale is 

 deposited wliere the roots of the young plants can immediately 

 find it. For barley and oats the same method is adopted. 



It will be seen that the cost of sowing superphosphate on 

 these crops is merely nominal. But for corn and potatoes, 

 when planted in hills, the superphosphate must be dropped in 

 the hill by hand, and, as we are almost always hurried at that 

 season of the year, we are impatient at anything which will 

 delay planting even for a daj'. The boys want to go fishing ! 



This is, undoubtedl}-, one reason why superphosi>hate is not 

 lised so generally with us for com as for wheat, barley, and 

 oats. Another reason may be, that one hundred pounds of corn 

 will not sell for anything like as much as one hundred pounds 

 of wheat, barley, and oats. 



We are now buying a very good superphosphate, made from 

 Carolina rock jjhosphate, for about one and a half cents per 

 pound. We usually drill in about two hundred pounds per acre 

 at a cost of three dollars. Now, if this gives us an increase of five 

 bushels of wheat per acre, worth six dollars, we think it pays. 

 It often does far better than this. Last year the wheat crop 

 of Western New York was the best in a third of a century, 

 which is as far back as I have had anything to do with farming 

 here. Fi cm all I can learn, it is doiibtf ul if the wheat crop of 

 Western New York has ever averaged a larger yield per acre 

 since the land was first cultivated after the removal of the 

 original f on st. Something of this is due to better methods of 

 cultivation and tillage, and something, doubtless, to the 

 general use of superphosphate, but much more to the favor- 

 able season. 



The present venr our wheat crop turned out exceedingly poor. 

 Hundreds of acres of wheat were plowed up, and the land re- 

 sown, and hundreds more would have been plowed up ha<i it 

 not been for the fact that the land was seeded with timothy 

 grass at the time of sowing the wheat, and with clover in the 

 spring. We do not like to lose our grass and clover. 



Dry weather in the autumn was the real cause of tlie poor 

 yield of wheat this year. True, we had a very trying winter, 

 and a still more trying spring, followed by dry, cold weather. 

 The season was very backward. We wci.' not able to sow any- 

 thing in the fields before the first of May, and our wheat 

 ought to have been ready to harvest in July. On the first 



