PROCEEDINGS OF THE FARMERS' CLUB. 255 



tored. Deep cultivation will nndoubteclly in the end recover sucli places, 

 but time and patience are indispensable. 



Mr. John G. Bergen. — These experiments are valuable. Men engaged 

 in agriculture generally cultivate the surface of the soil. I wish the expe- 

 riment had been cai-ried a little further, to show what effect would have 

 been produced by mixing the various substances with the loamy soil, as 

 that is what we want most to know — how to make the earth produce better. 

 It was certainly interesting to see it proved that substances that we are 

 in the habit of calling utterly barren are capable of growing useful plants, 



Mr. Wm. S. Carpenter insisted that they had no effect whatever upon the 

 plants — that they drew all their sustenance from the water and air. 



Dr. Trimble. — It is known that in the forests in the southern part of our 

 country moss is seen suspended from the branches of the trees without 

 being connected with them, showing that the moss derive their nourish- 

 ment from the air. 



Mr. Solon Robinson. — Is Dr, Trimble aware that the moss only grows 

 upon living trees. Roots or no roots, when the tree dies the moss dies. 



Mr. John G. Bergen. — I hope the remarks of the gentleman are not in- 

 tended to convey the impression that no nutrition is derived from the soil. 



Storing Hat in Stacks vs. Barns. 



Mr. D. F. Rogers writes from Walthara, La Salle county. 111., as follows: 



"I notice a discussion, at a meeting of the Club, upon stacking grain 

 and hay. Allow me to add a word out of some years' experience in both 

 methods, viz : stacking and storing under barn roofs. It seems to me that 

 when hay is put up in long, narrow ricks, made as high and steep as the 

 wind will allow, built solidly and well up in the middle, it will keep better 

 in every respect than if stored in barns. There are many good reasons for 

 this opinion, but I'll risk the opinion alone this time. 



"As to building barns to store small grain, the idea seems almost ridi- 

 culous to farmers here, who raise from fifty to one hundred acres every 

 year; it would take a fortune to build such an establishment, and then 

 with our present method of thrashing the grain, would all have to be moved 

 out again when the 'machine' carne iX)und. Everybody who has ever 

 farmed in the West knows that well bound, dry wheat can be stacked so as 

 to stand any weather for any length of time, and with no loss worth men- 

 tioning, even by a New Hampshire gravel-scratcher, who saves every 

 kernel. 



"There is, no doubt, a great amount of hay and grain lost by bad stack- 

 ing, but I have not very faint recollections of hay in scaffolds in New 

 England ruined by the odors from stables beneath them, and of "mow- 

 burnt " stuff that smelt to heaven from the other side the floor. The fashion 

 of thatching stacks, so common in England and other places, is entirely 

 unnecessary out here. Our dry, windy atmosphere is a sure preventive of 

 mold and must; in fact more hay is spoiled here by being dried to death 

 than in any other way. 



" The habit among tidy fanners here is to build ricks instead of round 



