" 358 |AsSEMBLT 



it has been decided that one bushel of turnips grown with bone, 

 is worth two bushels grown with best barn-yard manure. Mr. 

 Delafield'S experiments have satisfied me of it. In the Jersey 

 mine, there is some iron pyrites andjsome^feld spar, the latter of 

 which supplies potash. Even in the State of Massachusetts, (ac- 

 cording to the report of the Hon . Mr. Wilder,) the crop of wheat 

 had fallen off sixty thousand bushels last year, as compared with 

 10 years since, notwithstanding an increase of about one-third 

 the number of acres planted, and a corresponding increase in the 

 number of operators. 



Plants prefer the super phosphate to tlie^phosphate, as they 

 more readily take it up. The soil holds fast the manure, there 

 is no leading it downward, unless you place it in pure sand. 

 The price of this article must not be so high^as thirty-six cents 

 per bushel. In Cincinnati, bone is far cheaper than that — not- 

 withstanding the high price, a farmer will find it for his interest 

 to pay a dollar, or even "a dollar and thirty-six cents a bushel for 

 it, rather than not have it in all his compost heaps. Hundreds 

 of hogsheads of the burned^bone"used in sugar refining have gone 

 to enrich the soil. That bone has been burned over and over, 

 and there is no gelatine in it but that is easily obtained from the 

 glue factories to be added to the burned bone dust. Mr. Scofield, 

 of Morristown, N. J., has^experimented with bone, and has raised 

 1,400 bushels of Ruta Baga turnips on one acre, and that too of 

 superior quality, at a cost of not exceeding twenty-five dollars an 

 acre. The manure was equal in point of real value to one hundred 

 and fifty loads of ham-yard manure^ so far as the phosphates are 

 concerned. Clover, treated withMt,^has presented an enormous 

 mass of vegetation, almost a solid mass. 



Judge Van Wyck. — Phosphate of lime is certainly a veryjra- 

 portant ingredient in soils. A|portion"of it is necessary in^all 

 soils, for the healthful growth of all plants, and especially grasses 

 and grains, upon which most animals live. Essential as it is for 

 the vigorous growth and perfect maturing of plants, otlier mineral 

 ingredients are also necessary, and a number of others. To 

 spread phospliate of lime upon an acre of ground in an unrea- 

 sonable quantity, because perhaps it may be the most essential, 



