Proceedings of the Farmer^ Club. 633 



familiar witli the geology or mineralogy of that part of the State of 

 Pennsylvania, and having no report or other authority to refer to, I 

 can ®nly say that I strongly suspect that this is a case where a good 

 chemist would be useful. If I owned land there I should, iirst of all, 

 have some specimens of soil from the oldest fields, and from land 

 that had never raised wheat, analyzed and thoroughly examined by 

 some competent chemist. We are not informed as to whether the 

 corn crops are good, nor the oat crops, nor the grass. If these crops 

 are as good or better than they were years ago, and the falling off in 

 production is confined to wheat, the man of science should be able 

 to tell us what is the matter ; but I suspect that even he would want 

 to visit the locality when crops were growing, and get all the 

 facts bearing on the case, before he commenced the construction of 

 theories. I think the Club should have sent this case to their chem- 

 ist, rather than to a practical men ; but, as it has come to me, I will 

 indicate the policy that appears to me as promising the best result 

 that can l)e reached without the aid of science. 



I wish the doctor had told us what variety of wheat is raised at 

 Landisburg. Mediterranean wheat is very weak in the straw, and 

 on rich land lodges very badly. It is the wheat for poor land. Stiff 

 Btrawed wheat, on the contrary, is not adapted to poor land, but is to 

 rich land. Acting on this fact, I would try some stiff-strawed variety, 

 such as Treadwell, or, if I had no fears of the midge, the Deihl, 

 which is a white wheat, later in maturing, but worth in the market 

 twelve to fifteen per cent more than the red varieties. Use but little 

 seed, that the straw may grow large and strong. Thick wheat nec- 

 essarily has fine, limber straw. Use two or three bushels of salt, 

 sown broadcast on an acre soon after the snow is off in the spring. 

 To test the merits of thin sowing and salting, try some ground with 

 the usual amount of seed, and salt in strips, leaving strips of both 

 thick and thin seeding unsalted. Mark the results, and perhaps a 

 lesson may be learned in one year's trial that will be worth something. 



In advising the use of varieties of grain that have stiff straw and 

 thin seeding, I am but stating the practices adopted here, as our lands 

 grow more fertile, by our best farmers, who not only try to discern the 

 signs of the times, but to know what their neighbors are doing, and 

 thus draw their information from all that passes around them. To 

 such men the whole country is one great experimental farm, carried 

 on for their information. 



