508 TRANSACTIONS OF THB 



Mr. Fuller— Mr. Wilson of Deer Park, L. I., has grown two 

 tons of clover per acre upon what is called the barrens, and he 

 finds that he can grow any other crop after clover. 



Solon Robinson — The cheapest manure in the world is clover- 

 seed, and it has been very largely used in Virginia for that pur- 

 pose upon some of the old, worn-outfields, where the surface was 

 nothing but sand. Lime or guano being first applied, and wheat 

 sown with clover seed, and the first and second crop suffered to 

 decay, the soil becomes enriclied, so that any other crop may be 

 grown. If this Club could say or do anything to convince farm- 

 ers that a crop of clover is the cheapest manure in the world, 

 they would do them a greater service than by any other conceiva- 

 ble means. It is economy to buy manure, but only to get the 

 land in a heart to grow manure. Mr. Smith tells us that clover 

 has become a fixture in his soil. I can corroborate him in that, 

 for I have seen a good crop of clover nineteen years after it was 

 sown, the land having been alternately in corn, wheat and clover 

 without reseeding all that time. Now I believe that it is just as 

 easy to get clover a fixture of the soil as it is to have white dai- 

 sies; and is there a man who is so foolish as not to prefer clover? 



Mr. Pell — The manure we obtain from our animals is a mixture 

 compounded of vegetable and animal substances, such as putre- 

 fied straw of numerous varieties of grain, mingled with the ex- 

 crementitious matters of swine, sheep, horses, and cattle, which 

 mixture loses much by decomposition, and is very far from being 

 equal to the quantity of food made use of by the stock, though 

 many say it is much more. I have weighed the dry food given to 

 an ox, and also the dry resulting faeces, and have found that it only 

 weighed half: 200 lbs. of dry straw produced 100 lbs. of dry 

 manure ; 200 lbs. of dry hay, 175 lbs. of dry excrement. Watery 

 food produced less : 200 lbs. of turnips, 15 lbs; 200 lbs. of clover, 

 20 lbs.; 200 lbs. of potatoes, 30 lbs.; 200 lbs. of oats, 105 Ibs.j 

 200 lbs. of rye, 110 lbs. 



Mr. Tierl analyzed the excrements of a horse fed straw, oats 

 and hay, and found that a thousand parts gave : 



