No. 151.] 87 



sheep on an acre. It had been pastured for ten or fifteen years. A 

 year ago Mr. Bell prepared it for corn, by putting on it forty two 

 horse wagon loads of barn manure, and plowing it deep, first one 

 way and then across. He got from it more than forty bushels of 

 shelled corn per acre, or upwards of four hundred bushels from the 

 ten acres. Last fall he cut off the corn stalks close to the ground; 

 this spring he plowed it twice, early in April, crosswise, then harrow- 

 ed it four times, once before sowing the barley and three times after- 

 wards. He sowed two bushels and an half of seed on an acre. 

 Mr. Bell said, when questioned by the committee, as to the quantity 

 of seed proper to be sown, " The richer the land the more seed do I 

 put in, and this field is now seeded with clover and timothy, at the 

 rate of one peck of each per acre. I prefer barley to oats for my 

 stock, because my barley weighs forty-eight pounds to the bushel, 

 and oats but little more than thirty" 



Your committee then examined a ten acre field of Indian corn, a 

 large portion of it manured with guano; another with best barn yard 

 manure, broadcast, and four rows with best barn yard manure in the 

 hill. The guano was mixed with twice its quantity of loamy earth, 

 and then put into each hill a small quantity and a little soil over 

 that, so that the seed was not in contact with it. This corn looked 

 very well, not a hill appeared to have been injured by the guano, 

 and the color and growth was similar to that part of the field where 

 the barn yard manure had been applied broad cast. But Mr. Bell 

 called our attention to the four rows in the middle of the field, in 

 which he had put the best barn yard manure in the hills, and we 

 were surprised at the superior size and vigor of the plants in those 

 four rows. Mr. Bell showed us two rows in which he had put no 

 manure, and the plants in these were equal to those of the guano 

 growth, (at this date, but we have since learned from Mr. Bell that 

 the portion of the field manured with guano is gaining and indeed 

 surpassing some of the other parts.) 



We saw the stock of Mr. Bell; among them seventy-four cows, 

 and his justly admired bull Marius, whose figure deserves to be pre- 

 served in painting. He is now three years old, and this season is 

 sire of more than one hundred calves, some of which are taken by 

 Mr. Bell from their mothers at three days old, and always fed with 

 milk by his own hand. They came around your committee, licking 

 their hands with all the perfect familiarity of favorite dogs. One 

 large cow giving twenty-six quarts of milk per day, was purchased 

 by Mr. Bell from an honest Quaker, who oflfered her to him for sixty 



