154 [Assemble 



touclied by others. No plant, even of the largest crop, should be 

 crowded in the least if you want the greatest crop, the finest and 

 the most healthy that can grow. 



Professor Waring — Your method, perhaps, contracts the soil too 

 much. 



Mr. Meigs — Not so, I never had my garden beds pulverized Jess 

 than two spades deep, at least eighteen inches deep. I raised 

 Baden corn 16i feet high ; stalks seven inches in circumference 

 at the bottom, and averaging five stout ears on each stalk. Dr. 

 Mitchell used to compliment me on my productions. I have 

 raised rice, Sea Island cotton, and almost everything else on this 

 island. I made proper hotbeds to commence in February with 

 such as required a long summer. In that way I raised new sorts 

 of potatoes from the balls, one of which proved excellent for 

 many years, and then followed the example of some of their 

 Mercer kin, becoming black at heart. 



Mr. Solon Robinson — Mine may be deemed by some folks to 

 be a very queer notion, but my notion is, however, that the very 

 best way to gd rid of weeds is not to raise any! "Why do we cart 

 on and cover our fields with the barn yard manure full as it can 

 hold of seeds 1 Why not take a basket of weed seeds and sow it 

 broadcast 1 We do just as bad as that with our eyes wide open — 

 no, sir, shut I mean. We allow streams of rich fluid manure from 

 our barn yard to reach the field. What better mode could you 

 adopt for a rich weed crop than to manage it so that every part 

 is thoroughly drenched in and coated with the very manure? 

 Why not compost all the manures as Professor Mapes and some 

 others do, that the vitality of every part is extinguished before 

 the compost is put upon the field. You must not therefore use 

 his compost to raise weeds; he kills every seed that gets into it. 

 What a practice adverted to by the Chairman, that of draining 

 the life out of the dung heap and then casting the useless leav- 

 ings upon the land, all the ammonia gone off in those clouds of 

 smoke you see continually rising from your dunghill ! Whoever 

 heard of a seed found alive in the guano beds? or in the phos 

 phates or improved superphosphates of lime 1 Thre aie, to be 

 sure seeds found at various depths in the earth. 



