AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 415 



plaster, or both combined. Salt and lime would both be beneficial. As for 

 quantity, no one will be likely to get too much. When lime is used to the 

 greatest extent in Pennsylvania, Delaware and Maryland, about 30 bushels 

 per acre of powdered lime, that is by air slacking, is considered a good 

 dressing, to be repeated at intervals of two or three years, until the land 

 gets four dressings. If quick-lime could be procured, and slacked with 

 water saturated with salt, and exposed under cover for some weeks to the 

 air, occasionally raking off the outside of the heap, thirteen bushels per 

 acre to any land that was full of inert organic matter, it would prove equal 

 to a liberal dressing of manure, when applied at the rate of thirty bushels 

 per acre. Salt may be applied alone to most land, with advantage, at the 

 rate of five to fifteen bushels per acre. As to muck, from one load to a 

 thousand per acre will pay for its application. 



SOWING CLOVER SEED — A FAIR CRITICISM. 



Solon Kobinson. — I hold in my hand a letter written by John Johnson, 

 of Geneva, who is one of the best farmers in the State of New York, which 

 criticised some of our sayings and doings here, in very just terms. Mr. 

 Johnson says : 



"I read that Mr. Pell sows one bushel of red clover seed to the acre. 

 Now such nonsense as this should not go out among farmers, a great many 

 of whom are opposed to anything like book farming ; and when they see a 

 record of such folly, it is less wonder that they shoijld believe nothing that 

 is written on agriculture further than their own practice. 



I thought at the time that the statement was a most extravagant one, 

 but I felt no disposition to dispute it, nor would I dispute a man who should 

 ptate the only manure he used upon his land was cats and dogs, which 

 rained down ; because I have heard of its raining cats and dogs, as long as 

 I can remember, and I should, of course, believe that it rained a manurial 

 supply of these animals upon any gentleman's farm who asserted it to be so. 

 Just so with the clover seed ; I believed that Mr. Pell sowed a bushel per 

 acre, or thought he did ; but I did not believe that any body else ever did, 

 and I was satisfied that some folks would not believe that he did. 



I stated at the same time that I believed clover seed the cheapest sub- 

 stance that a farmer can use for manure. But I did not mean that he should 

 use it in bulk, as he would guano or plaster, but sow it, to grow a crop of 

 clover, which he would allow to rot on the surface, or turn under." 



In relation to quantity of clover seed to the acre, Mr. Johnson says that 

 his man once accidentally sowed by the use of a machine — 



" Twenty-four quarts per acre of clover seed. The result was, where the 

 24 quarts were sown to the acre, the clover never got taller than the natu- 

 ral white clover we some seasons have in such quantities, but which is gene- 

 rally too short to cut; while that sown at about 10 lbs. to the acre was as 

 good as I could wish. I never have sown over twelve pounds of clover 

 seed to the acre, unless done by mistake, and I have always had large crops 

 if any one else in the neighborhood had." 



Now, I think that Mr. Johnson must acknowledge that if Mr. Pell's 



