256 Transactions of the American Institute. 



the ground would produce just as fine pears and apples as these 

 here before us, and just as large potatoes as these, and red clover 

 as heavy as any man desires to see. I have my mind on a spot in 

 Manchester, where the ground last year looked more like dirty 

 snow than soil. But this season I have seen two crops of red 

 clover mowed on it, and removed; and now the third crop is up 

 so that there is a good bite of gi*ass. In this instance, nothing but 

 a dressing of muck was applied to the soil. Surely, " muck is the 

 mother of meal." 



Now, then, to get a start of clover, I would spread a dressing of 

 muck and a little marl over the surface this fall, or at any period 

 in the winter, and harrow it in most thoroughly. Early in the 

 spring, before the growing season commences, I would sow about 

 five hundred pounds of Bough's raw-bone superphosphate of lime 

 per acre, and harrow that in. Then sow the clover seed and bush 

 that in. If I desired to make pasture or a lawn, I would sow and 

 bush in at the same time, a bushel of Kentucky blue grass seed 

 and four quarts of timothy seed per acre. Such soils need phos- 

 phatic and some nitrogenous material for making grass and clover 

 grow. Last year, when I came in possession of my Brooklyn City 

 farm, the proprietor had been trying, for seven successive years, to 

 get grass on the front lawn and in the back yard. I felt ashamed 

 of it all last summer; but go there to-day, and you will find a per- 

 fect mat of green grass — a most beautiful green carpet — on those 

 barren spots, which have been mowed twice the present season; 

 and I observed this morning that the grass in my rear yard has 

 become such a dense mass that it is now rotting down. To pro- 

 duce this luxuriant growth, I simply fed the soil what there was 

 lacking to produce a crop of beautiful grass. Simply a dressing 

 of Bough's raw-bone was applied, which will soon change any bar- 

 ren waste into a beautiful green lawn. It is a great point gained 

 to know what the land wants. 



Mr. N. C. Meeker. — I can tell how such bountiful crops of Indian 

 corn and wheat and clover are produced. We generally find such 

 large crops near glass works, or other extensive manufactories, 

 where a large number of teams are kept. Of course, a large quan- 

 tity of manure is made, and it is carted, at an enormous expense, to 

 those fields. Any one can produce such crops with a bountiful 

 supply of manure. 



Mr. W. P. Peck. — I would prefer a farm of sand to a fai'm that 

 is more like a stone-quarry than a cultivable field. I know of farms 



