632 TuAysACTioNS of the American Ixstitute. 



parativ-e value of corn and potatoes, I will say that dry corn contains 

 from eio;hty to eighty-five per cent of nutritive matter, a considerable 

 part of which is nitrogenized, and helps to make red flesh, while the 

 Btarch and sugar tends to make fat. Average potatoes have only 

 some twenty-seven per cent of nutrition, and, with the exception of 

 less than one-half per cent of albumen, this is mostly starch. In 

 round figures, one bushel of corn would be worth about as much as 

 four bushels of potatoes. But, in addition to the actual nutrition 

 they contain, the juices of the potato are wholesome, as they help 

 to digest dry food. 



LoDGiwG OF Wheat on Eicii Lands. 



Hon. George Geddes, Fairmount, Onondaga county, I^. Y. — The 

 Farmers' Club of the American Institute has referred to me, for an 

 answer to a letter dated Landisburg, Perry Co., Penn., signed James 

 Gilbraith, M. D., from which I extract as follows : " Some years 

 back, or in the earlier settlement of our country, thirty, thirty-five, 

 and as high as forty bushels of wheat have been produced to the 

 acre of ground ; but now from twelve to fifteen, and at furtherest 

 twenty or twenty-two, is the most that can can be raised. This is 

 not owing to want of fertility in the soil. Where the ground is made 

 good by manuring, so as to produce a good crop, the wheat will 

 lodge and not fill. Anything that can be suggested by the Club on 

 this subject will be gratefully received." 



Assuming that the doctor has in all particulars stated his case cor- 

 rectly, it certainly is one of great interest. A limestone soil that 

 once produced large yields of wheat, under what must be admitted 

 to be a good rotation of crops, can no longer be made to produce a 

 fair average of the grain, though it will produce largely of straw. 

 Red clover is plowed under, and, in fact, so far as appears from the 

 letter, everything has been done to increase the fertility of the soil 

 by the farmers, that has been supposed to be necessary in other 

 places. Our own farm has been managed very mu-ch in the way 

 indicated in this account of the Landisburg processes, and seventy 

 years of cropping has resulted quite differently so far as the yield of 

 grain is concerned. An agricultural chemist would doubtless say that 

 the Landisburg soils had been exhausted of some mineral constituent 

 of wheat, that an analysis would show was now wanting ; and he, per- 

 haps, would suggest that there was a lack of soluble silex. The falling 

 of the straw before the heads are filled indicates this. Not being 



