AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 507 



out any raking. I have produced seven and one-half tons of 

 clover per acre. I keep my orchard constantly in plowed crops, 

 generally potatoes. I find potatoes do not rot where shaded, 

 although they do not yield as much. I am going to plant corn 

 and potatoes upon the same ground, this year. When I used 

 lime, half a bushel, j^laster half a bushel, and wood-ashes six 

 bushels per acre, I never had any potato rot, and I intend to try 

 it again. 



Dr. Waterbury — The value of any vegetable substance cannot 

 be increased for manuring purposes by feeding it to animals. 

 This is one reason why the barn cellar preserves the manure in a 

 more valuable condition. It keeps it dry; it is preserved just as 

 we preserve our hay. There is no doubt of the plan mentioned 

 by Mr. Lawton, being a valuable one, of underdraining barn- 

 yards. It assists to keep the manuie in a dry state, and it cer- 

 tainly will add to the comfort of man and beast. 



Mr. Solon Robinson alluded to the plan of cultivating clover 

 in Virginia. Clover was thought by the Virginians to be the best 

 and cheapest manure in the world. The clover is sown with the 

 wheat. Cattle are not sent on, or not in numbers to crop it. 

 The plant serves as a mulch, a good warm blanket for the Winter. 

 It is pastured, and in the second Fall it is turned over and corn 

 planted, then subsequently wheat. Nineteen crops of clover had 

 been grown on the land without seed. The clover becomes a fix- 

 ture, more valuable far than white daisies. When farmers learn 

 that it is not necessary to pass clover through cattle to make ma- 

 nure, they will carry home from New- York clover-seed instead of 

 hauling home colored straw from the stables and fancying it is 

 manure. We might glorify a man for erecting a barn — fiir better 

 to glorify the man who has no barn nor barnyard, but who ma- 

 nures his land by growing clover. 



Mr. Lawton — I have manured potatoes with dry rye straw and 

 with good manure, and with salt hay, in rows, parallel. The 

 manui-ed rows were worth nothing ; the rows with straw, half a 

 crop; the rows with salt hay good. 



Mr. Smith — The most economical manuring is to grow a crop 

 on the land. In no other way can land be manured so cheaply 

 as by clover grown and left to decay upon the ground. 



