Proceedings of the Farmers' Club. 629 



a two-liorse plow and runs it deep. This covers some of the potatoes, 

 but enough labor is saved to make it pay. 



Mr, J. B. Lyman. — Judging from the picture, this machine cannot 

 be sold for less than $120 or $130. Few farmers are willing to pay 

 as much as that for a tool that is used a week, and then gathering 

 rust for a year. It must require two and probably three horses to 

 work it, and that is an objection. I saw the other day, at the Tren- 

 ton Agricultural Works, a digger that can be sold for sixty or seventy 

 dollars, yet digs clean, and can be pulled by two horses. Most 

 inventors fiiil, by trying to make a machine that attempts too much, 

 and costs too much. 



Manures for Corn. 



Mr. James II. Ball, North Nassau, N. Y. — In planting corn last 

 spring I w^as anxious to get some commercial fertilizer to take the 

 jjlace of hog manure in the hill. Not finding any ground bone or 

 ground fish in the Albany market, I tried a barrel of double refined 

 poudrette in competition with hog manure, hen manure and plaster, 

 and ashes and plaster, the plaster being about one-fifth the bulk of 

 the two other mixtures. Commenced planting on west side of piece 

 May 25, using about a gill of ashes and plaster to a hill till the supply 

 was exliausted ; then left four rows, planting the corn dry ; then used 

 hen manure and ashes, about a gill to a hill, till that was used up ; 

 then planted four rows dry ; then used poudrette, also about a gill to 

 a hill ; then four rows ^vy ; then used hog manure that had been 

 mixed with four times its bulk of muck ; of this we put perhaps a 

 quart in each hill. In each case the manure was covered with earth, 

 and the corn planted on the covering. It all came up very nice, but 

 from the start that on the hog manure took the start, and could be 

 distinguished by its rankei growth and darker color, as far as the 

 piece could be seen. June 23d, I looked over the piece, and could 

 see but little dift'erence betM'een that where the ashes were used and 

 that planted dry by the side of it. AYhere the hen manure was used 

 it was one-third larger than that planted dr}' by its side ; poudrette 

 about twice as large; the hog manure four times as large as that 

 planted dry by its side, and remarkably fine, dark colored and stocky. 

 I cut up 100 hills of each kind, husked separate, and weighed in the 

 ear. The weight of the 100 hills where the ashes and plaster were 

 used, I am unable to give, but it difi*ered but little from tlie hen 

 manure. The ears from 100 hills hen manure, weighed fifty-three 

 pounds; poudrette weighed forty -six pounds ; hog manure weighed 



