Proceedings of the Farmers' Club. 419 



forty years ago you made some change in your organization, and 

 became the American Institute, for the protection of the great and 

 lasting interests of this nation, and among those interests you place 

 agriculture at the bottom as the mud-sill, the bed-rock, the indispensa- 

 ble support of all that stands above, even to the cap-stone. In this 

 you were wise. Then you started these conversational meetings for 

 exchanging your views and knowledge of rural things, and ever 

 since then, for two score years, I have read your talks every week, 

 and read them with profit. Sometimes you are not right — who that 

 is mortal can be \ — but you are always earnest and honest and con- 

 scientious and public-spirited, and those are golden virtues, and will 

 shine when wit and balderdash have been raked away as chips, late- 

 cut hay and stubble, trash that they are. 



You have done a great deal in these forty years to instruct the 

 farmers of the country. You have broken down the old prejudice 

 against book farming. Men have read your proceedings and dis- 

 cussed the speakers, and criticised and thought over what was said ; 

 and while they were only amused, as they supposed, they have swal- 

 lowed knowledge, and became book farmers, and better farmers, with- 

 out knowing it. So, Mr. Chairman, without using any more of your 

 time with my words, let me bid you God-speed, and long years of 

 such service and such usefulness. 



OYSTER-SnELL LlME. 



Mr. H. Todd, St. Stephens, N. B. — Does it pay to burn oyster 

 shells for lime, hauling the shells two miles, with soft wood at ten 

 cents per load, and lime selling at one dollar per cask ; and how should 

 it be burned ? How much are soft-wood ashes worth, burned out in 

 the air, per barrel, for top-dressing on clay loam soil ? 



Mr. H. Stewart — He can burn the shells by piling them in layers 

 with wood, each layer a few inches thick, and covering the heap with 

 sods to confine the heat. Shell lime is worth more agriculturally 

 than -stone lime, but not for any other purpose. Soft-wood ashes are 

 worth less than hard-wood ashes ; probably twenty-five cents a bar- 

 rel is about their value. 



Professor Nash — It will pay to haul oyster shells twenty miles, if 

 lie cannot get them nearer. Lime is of use to make other manure 

 .available for the plants. On light soils ashes are no good, for the 

 more you put on the land the less you will take off. 



Mr. F. D. Curtis — I have known a case where the effects of a 

 dressing of ashes on a field were perceptible after fifty-three years. 



