18G1. 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



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similar to that in force in Maryland. He said 

 immense quantities of guano were imported into 

 Baltimore, and it was used in very large quanti- 

 ties on the plantations, with the best results. 

 Here there was no confidence as to the genuine- 

 ness of the article. He had experimented with 

 guano successfully for several years, and he had 

 also found phosphate of lime very good, and in 

 his opinion the farmers in our State had mistaken 

 their true interests in not using more of these 

 fertilizers. He said that the land farmed by Mr. 

 Quincy was comparatively level, while the farms 

 in Worcester county ware so hilly that it cost from 

 40 to 50 cents per load of half a cord to get the 

 manure on to the ground, and thus the artificial 

 manures were advantageous. 



He considered 200 lbs. of guano equal to six 

 loads of our common manure, the latter costing 

 $15 when applied to the land, while the former 

 would only cost $8, thus effecting a saving of 

 nearly 50 per cent, in producing the same crops. 

 Last year, he had raised on a very poor pasture, 

 that had never been manured to any extent, 50 

 bushels of very heavy oats to the acre, by the 

 application of 200 lbs. of guano, and other ex- 

 periments, had resulted in like manner. Of course 

 the first object should be to get all the common 

 manure on the farm, but as this would not be 

 enough for ordinary purposes, he would recom- 

 mend guano, and he proposed to increase the ap- 

 plication of it on his farm, next year, threefold. 



Simon Brown, of Concord, said he believed 

 in the use of guano, but he thought farmers should 

 make it themselves. It is excellent as an auxili- 

 ary, but should not be depended upon as a prin- 

 cipal. If he could have his way, he would keep 

 his cattle as compact as possible for their com- 

 fort, and have a barn cellar with a bottom of clay, 

 four or five inches deep, well pounded down ; then 

 he would put meadow mud, sand or sawdust in 

 one corner, and every morning would cover the 

 droppings from the barn with this mud or sand, 

 letting it all remain through the winter until it 

 was wanted for use in the spring, when he would 

 have a pasty compound of the richest fertilizer. 

 If he used it on sward land, he would plow with 

 a double plow, and cart out in the green state in 

 the spring, and plow it in. By applying to the 

 surface in September, and turning it in by plow- 

 ing, you have in the spring a soil rich enough for 

 anything. On stubble, he said he had covered 

 the ground with manure in the fall, and in the 

 spring plowed again, and with this treatment he 

 had planted parsnips one year, and got over 1000 

 bushels to the acre, never having seen the bottom 

 of a single one, the man who dug them remark- 

 ing that it was "like digging post-holes." He 

 had also raised excellent crops of carrots, man- 

 go-ds, &c. He thought Mr. Walker was mistaken 



about guano, and if we believe in our hearts what 

 he advocates, it will be a most unfortunate thing 

 for our State. In his opinion, the speaker said, 

 Massachusetts is from half a million to a mil- 

 lion dollars worse off to-day from the use of 

 guano. He was recently in company with several 

 old practical farmers, who bad used guano, more 

 or less, for from 5 to 10 years, and they con- 

 demned its use as a principal agent. Guano, said 

 he, where ammonia predominates, is a stimulant 

 and not a fertilizer but a fertilizer when abound- 

 ing in phosphates. He had used American guano 

 with fine results, as it starts corn in the hill Avon- 

 derfully quick ; as an auxiliary, guano may be 

 good, as a main manure it is not so. 



The speaker said that if a portion of night soil 

 was collected and mixed with meadow mud and 

 then sprinkled with plaster of Paris, and in 

 spring or summer turned over, an excellent com- 

 post would be made, and if it was prepared too 

 late for application in the fall, barrel it up. If 

 the manure is scattered broadcast on the land in 

 spring and plowed in, and the compost applied 

 to the hills of corn, it will force it as well as gu- 

 ano. The droppings from hen roosts, mixed 

 with mud or sand, had also been used in the 

 same way by many farmers in his county. He 

 also recommended taking a leaky molasses hogs- 

 head and sprinkling in it a bushel of plaster of 

 Paris with meadow muck, and then thoroughly 

 saturating this with urine until the smell of am- 

 monia was gone, when an excellent substitute for 

 guano was ready. The contents of the hogshead 

 might then be barreled up for use, and thus a 

 farmer be all the time making this compost. By 

 applying this in the hill, corn will come up 

 quicker, and you can gain two or three weeks. 

 He did not wonder that $65 per ton for Peruvi- 

 an guano was discouraging to farmers, and he 

 thought the use of it had been a curse to Massa- 

 chusetts. 



Mr. Wetherell, of Boston, said he thought 

 it mattered not whether the vegetable matter is 

 decomposed in the cow or in the ground, and to 

 show that, he cited the opinion of Liebig, who 

 stated that a crop of clover plowed into the 

 ground would contain more fertilizing pi-operties 

 than if fed to cattle and applied in the form of 

 manure. He spoke of an experiment on a field 

 of turnips, feeding one-third to sheep in the field, 

 one-third to them on the ground on which they 

 grew, and plowing the remaining third in, and the 

 result had been that the farmer had raised the next 

 year 46 bushels of oats on the first third, 70 bush- 

 els on the second and 80 bushels on the last. He 

 spoke of another farmer who had used 300 lbs. of 

 Peruvian guano to an acre of sandy plain where 

 nothing would grow, and he had harvested 50 

 bushels of corn to the acre from it. He asserted 



