ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 89 



Confmercial fertilizers can be used to profit in the absence 

 of barnyard manure. I have used bone superphosphate, 

 upon oat and corn land. With a four-years' trial it in- 

 creased the yield fully forty per cent. It was applied to the 

 surface and cultivated in. Common salt gave equally good 

 results. In many individual cases salt has increased the 

 wheat crop from fifty to seventy-five per cent. The profits 

 of the farm are in v/hat you have to sell, instead of that you 

 buy. If we practice that which we preach, we will have to 

 buy less and have more to sell. Let me repeat it : sow 

 clover, and sow it liberally. 



Patten : Was troubled with his oats lodging. It 

 generally cost him more to have them harvested than they 

 were worth. He would like to know how to obviate it. 



Sheldon : Thought salt could be used to good ad- 

 vantage on all soils. It would strengthen the straw. 



Judge Lawrence : Wanted to say a word against the 

 use of artificial fertilizers. He had lately been traveling 

 and visiting farms in New York. He inquired of some 

 of the farmers how they kept up their soils, and he 

 found that they were paying more for artificial manures 

 than they got out of the land. He raised about two 

 bushels of grain to his neighbor's one. He had a piece of 

 soil that was naturally strong soil. It was what was called 

 sub-soil. He ploughed that up in 1837, and, without ex- 

 ception, it had borne a crop of grain every year from then 

 until 1876, when he raised a crop of clover on it. He had 

 tried to plow the clover under, but it was so rank he could 

 not. So far as he could see, that land was just as strong 

 now as it was forty years ago, and the only manure it ever 

 had was the vegetation he had ploughed under. He always 

 spread manure on the surface, and he drew it from the 

 barnyard as soon as made. Yet this rule would not always 

 work. He remembered a few years ago he had a number 



