124 [Assembly 



why corn crops do not average better in all the corn growing 

 States. Mr. Robinson said, he hoped strangers present would not 

 take an opinion they had reiterated here to-day, that concentrated 

 manures are useless, as the opinion of but one member of the 

 Club. We have never recommended a farmer to neglect his 

 barn-yard manure, but to add gnano, bone dust, Improved supei- 

 phosphate, and everything of the kind that he can buy, because 

 no farmer can make as much manure as he can use profitably. 



Prof. Mapes — I protest against this club entertaining or tolerat- 

 ing the repetition of the nonsense that barn-yard manure is all 

 that is necessary to be applied to any land, or that it is not pro- 

 fitable for a farmer to purchase just such specific manures as 

 analysis shows the land requires. You all recollect the crop of 

 Indian corn I produced upon land where manuring did but little 

 good. The land wanted chlorine and phosphate, and this I ap- 

 plied at a cost of about $2 an acre, and doubled the crop of corn. 

 I hold in my hand an analysis of Illinois prairie soil, that shows 

 it is rich in all but one or two cheap ingredients, necessary to its 

 utmost fertility. If these are added, and the land drained and 

 plowed deep, it will be always productive. Notwithstanding the 

 last crop was 80 bushels per acre, it may be nearly doubled, and 

 so may the crops of almost all of our farmers. It is nonsense for 

 a Dutchess county farmer to be content with forty bushels of corn 

 per acre when he can get eighty bushels by |3 more expense. 



The learned Professor, after receiving constant applause, said, 

 " I am but a collater of other men's ideas — none of my own. I 

 put forth the good, analyze and add the missing ingredients to 

 your land that's best !" 



Mr. Lowe made some valuable observations relative to the very 

 useful action of clover and its roots, in bringing up to the surface 

 of the soil the inorganic constituents of the soil. 



Subjects for the next Club " Indian Corn and Fences," proposed 

 by Solon Robinson. 



Mr. W. J. Stillman presented grafts from a seedling plum of 

 Schenectady, called the Duane plum, of which one other tree, a 



