434 Transactions of the American Institute. 



blossoms was exhaled, as a " sweet smelling savor," the well known 

 delicious odor of the clover field, to gladden the senses of their 

 deity; and we may safely conclude that it did this quite as surely 

 as when, according to the description of Virgil in one of the pas- 

 toral strains of his Georgics, those more ancient devotees laid at 

 the feet of this same manure god the firstlings of their flocks, or the 

 richest fruits of their fields. I confess that nothing would so much 

 tempt me to become a worshipper at a Pagan shrine as the grate- 

 ful emotions which I have never failed to experience at the sight 

 of an " Old Virginia " clover field, in full bloom, on some balmy 

 morning in the month of June, or as I hope to ere long see its like 

 again, everywhere, in New Virginia ! 



At the conclusion of this paper, the thanks of the Club were ten- 

 dered to the author. 



SURFACE MANURING FOR WHEAT. 



Mr. C. R. Baker, Attica, Wyoming county, N. Y. — A little more 

 than a yeai' ago I covered a small piece of winter wheat with coarse 

 horse manure, spreading it as evenly as possible on the top of the 

 snow. At that time there was but little snow on the ground, and, 

 for fear it might all melt or blow ofi" and leave the wheat exposed, 

 I concluded to keep it covered with manure, knowing that a top- 

 dressing would be beneficial to the crop after the frost was out of 

 the ground in the spring. When I came to harvest the wheat, I 

 found it was remarkably plump and heavy, and, after threshing 

 some of it with a flail, I thought I would measure it as accurately 

 as possible, and weigh it to see how much it would go to the 

 bushel, and the result was sixty-three pounds. I cannot say 

 whether it is all to be credited to the manure, or only in part, for 

 the land is a clay loam, and has always been considered rather poor 

 soil, or at least until quite recently. Be that as it may, I took a 

 crop of spring wheat off of the same ground, but a few weeks 

 before I plowed it for the crop which I have mentioned, and that 

 was a good crop; the yield was about eighteen bushels to the acre, 

 plump and nice. For the spring crop I broke up the ground in 

 the fall of 1865, and on the 19th day of April, 1866, sowed my 

 wheat on the inverted sod, and harrowed it twice over; so j'ou see 

 I did not take any extra pains to make a crop. I cannot tell how 

 many bushels there are of the winter wheat, as it is not yet all 

 threshed, but, judging from that M'hich I have thi'eshed, think it 

 will yield about the same as the spring wheat did. 



