"468 Transactions of the American Institute. 



of a good j-ield of grain ? We obtain a fine growth of plant, 

 but neither wheat or corn ears satisfactorily. The straw of wheat is 

 apt to be weak and fall, and holds green after the grain is hard. 

 This is the experience of several years on our prairies. Your weekly 

 meetings are benefiting tens of thousands of whom you never hear. 

 Allow me to state here, emphatically, that the man who propagated 

 and gave |;us the Wilson Albany Seedling Strawberry, perpetrated an 

 inestimable blessing on the people of these latitudes. 



Mr. J. B. Lyman. — For a general answer I say — plaster. Let him 

 stimulate and thicken his clover with a top dressing of gypsum, and 

 plow under a sward that had all the lime it wanted while it was 

 growing. Clover has given the best returns as a fertilizer when 

 plowed under in soils well supplied with lime, as, for example, on the 

 crumbling green shales of western New York. A prairie soil has 

 abundance of potash, and the mild acids formed by vegetable decay. 

 But the supply of phosphoric acid, or phosphate of lime, must be 

 small, because this is generally of animal origin. Mr. Jackson should 

 use concentrated animal manures, not so much barn compost, because 

 they contain a great deal of carbon, that is of dried grass and potash, 

 of which there is enough on the soil now. If he can buy in Chicago 

 a ton or more of good honest bone-dust, that and plaster will prove 

 the wisest purchase he can make. 



September 14, 1869. 



Nathan C. Ely, Esq., in the chair. 

 Inflvence of Certain Tkees on Chops. 



Mr. E. B. Seelye, Hudson, Mich., says, in his opinion, rust in 

 ■yvheat is produced by the barberry bush. 



Dr. Isaac P. Trimble. — This is an old tradition that I heard from a 

 boy, but there is no foundation for the belief. I have noticed, how- 

 ever, that potatoes in the shade of the black walnut never produce 

 well. The influence extends to some distance beyond the earth 

 penetrated by the roots of the walnut, and is one of those anomalies 

 in agriculture which farmers observe and hand down by tradition, 

 but cannot explain. But this old story about the connection of bar- 

 berry with rust in wheat is without foundation in fact. Rust is pro- 

 duced by another class of causes. 



IVIr. S. Edwards Todd. — I am of the same opinion, but I know 



