194 TRANSACTIONS OF THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 



year, and did, by manuring high, say 600 pounds per acre of 

 Mape's superphosphate, and partly upon land that I cleared last 

 year of briars, bushes, tussocks, &c., it being the dryest part of 

 that piece of bottom land where I planted my cranberry plat. 

 The very tough sod was as well plowed last fall as I could get an 

 Irishman to do it by the job. The way it was treated in the 

 spring was first to put a subsoil plow into it by means of a yoke 

 of good strong oxen, upon the corn stubble part that worked 

 well, and only so-so in the sod ground. By the by the corn stub- 

 ble had been plowed in the fall after the corn was harvested. 

 This new way of plowing attracted some attention. Several 

 passers-by stopped to look and wonder, and say " pooh." After 

 it was thus plowed, it was dressed with a moderate coat of man- 

 ure, composed of barn-yard, well rotted stuff, and hair and spent 

 lime, &c., from a glue manufactory, and old ditch bank stuff, to 

 which was added a small percentage of the bulk of printer's 

 roller composition, and about a peck of salt to a cord of manure. 

 It was piled in the fall, and overhauled once in the winter, and 

 was not quite ripe when a portion of it was spread upon the wet 

 ground. After harrowing over the manure, to break the lumps 

 and mix it with the soil, three bushels of common black seed 

 oats were sown, and plowed in with a light plow, and again har- 

 rowed. This was done about the 12th of April, and the season 

 that followed was not favorable to the growth of a good crop. 

 It was altogether too dry for the growing plants to get the full 

 benefit of the manure ; but they grew, and I soon began to hear 

 that Robinson had the best piece of oats in the county. I wished 

 every day that the piece had been large as well as the oats. My 

 neighbors were sadly disappointed, I believe, that the crop did 

 not all fall down before it was ripe, but it did not — only part of 

 it, and that part on the new ground, which is say two-fifths of 

 the whole. The great drouth in July prevented the plants from 

 attaining as large a growth as they would, particularly on the 

 old ground, which is part of a piece noted for its poverty. I 

 show a fair average sample of the growth upon the corn ground. 

 The straw you see is about four feet and a half long. Some of it 

 on the new ground was full a foot higher. It was as high as my 

 shoulders, and stout in proportion. Intending to feed the crop 

 without threshing, I had it cut pretty green — that is, as soon as 

 most of the straw turned yellow. That on the corn stubble part 

 and a portion of the other, was bound up into very stout double 



