1878.] 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
135 
same operation, -worked out. TVe usually work out 
the buttermilk, salt, and after eight to twelve 
hours, work again, and thoroughly. Her butter 
was excellent, and kept well—rather better,perhaps, 
than if it had been worked twice in the usual way ; 
for there is such danger of breaking the butter 
globules, that it is better to err on the side of 
hardly working enough, than to work it too much. 
It takes considerable hard work to make the butter 
appear greasy, from the broken butter globules; 
yet, doubtless, a few globules break very easily iu 
the operation. We all know that greasy butter will 
not stay sweet; hence, the problem is, to remove 
the buttermilk, with the least possible working. 
It is only a few days ago, that a gentleman who 
used to live at Antigua, in the West Indies, was at 
my desk, on some business, and stated that the 
best butter ever received in those hot ports was 
Irish butter ; that it was never, in his experience, 
other than sweet, and excellent, and that after a 
firkin was opened, it kept until it was consumed. 
Talks on Farm Crops—No. 14. 
By the Author of “ Walks and Talks on the Farm," 
“ Harris on the Pig," etc. 
I anticipate great things from Prof. Atwater’s 
Farm Experiments. That was a grand idea, put¬ 
ting up small packages of different manures of 
known composition, and letting farmers try them 
on different soils and on different crops. I hope 
the good work will be continued, with such changes 
as experience shall show to be necessary. And I 
hope in all cases one or two plots will be left with¬ 
out manure of any kind. [Of course the writer did 
not know of our plan for Experiment Stations all 
over the country, given last month on p. 86.— Ed.] 
Indian corn has long been, to me, one of the 
mysteries of our agriculture. It is a grand crop. 
In chemical composition, Indian com and wheat 
closely resemble each other. And yet, on a great 
variety of soils, without manure, one acre of Indian 
com will yield double the amount of produce as 
an adjoining acre 60 wn with wheat. In other 
words, it is as easy to grow 30 bushels of shelled 
com per acre, as 15 bushels of wheat per acre. 
I think the rule would hold good on a great 
many farms in this section. It is due probably in 
some degree to the fact that Indian com grows 
later in the season, and duriug very hot weather. It 
takes up from the soil, and evaporates through its 
leaves, an immense amount of water, and conse¬ 
quently is able to take up a much larger quantity 
of nitrogen from the soil. If land, in good condi¬ 
tion for wheat, with season favorable, produces 
15 bushels of wheat per acre, I think the reason it 
does not produce 20 or 25 or 30 bushels, is due to a 
lack of available nitrogen in the soil, and possibly 
to a deficiency of available phosphoric acid. There 
is enough of it in the soil, but the wheat is not able 
to take it up—while the com is. 
“A bushel of com and stalk,” said the Doctor, 
“contains about 1-lb. of phosphoric acid, and a 
bushel of wheat and straw about the same amount. 
And we shall not be far wrong in assuming that a 
bushel of wheat and straw contains li lb. of nitro¬ 
gen, and a bushel of com and stover about the same. 
Why a given piece of laud that will only grow, with¬ 
out manure, 15 bushels of wheat, will grow 30 
bushels of corn, is a question that, at present, can 
not be answered. You need more experiments, 
and Prof. Atwater is entitled to great credit for 
what he is doing in this direction.” 
“ All of which,” said the Deacon, ironically, “is 
wonderfully interesting. Assume, for the time be¬ 
ing, that the reason is because the com, growing in 
warmer weather, and perspiring freely, can drink a 
much larger quantity of water. If it sucks up twice 
the water from the soil, it would get twice the 
amount of phosphoric acid, nitrogen, and potash. 
This is easy enough to understand, and you may as 
well take it for granted and go on with your story.” 
“ Very well,” said I, “ then it follows that (1) if 
corn and wheat brought the same price, com would 
be a much more profitable crop for the ‘ chemical 
farmer,’ than wheat. The wheat might leave more 
than half the ‘ chemicals ’ in the ground, while corn 
might take up two-thirds or more of them. (2). It 
follows, too, that land may be much more rapidly 
and completely impoverished by growing corn, than 
by growing wheat, but (3), on the other hand, if the 
crop is fed out on the farm, corn can be used to 
great advantage in developing and increasing the 
fertility of the farm. It will gather up the nitrogen, 
phosphoric acid, potash, etc., from very weak solu¬ 
tions in the land, and when the crop is fed to ani¬ 
mals, from 80 to 95 per cent of the valuable ingre¬ 
dients of plant-food will be left in the manure, and 
the manure can be used for growing crops which 
need a larger supply of plant-food in the soil, and 
which command a higher price.” 
“ That is not a bad idea,” said the Doctor. “You 
can grow corn, and, by feeding it out on the farm, 
make your land rich enough to grow good crops of 
wheat, potatoes, barley, etc. All these crops, in 
proportion to the nitrogen, phosphoric acid, and 
potash that they contain, usually bring a higher 
price than corn.”—“In some parts of the West,” 
said the Deacon, “ one bushel of wheat will buy 
four bushels of corn, and even here one bushel 
of wheat will buy 2I£ bushels of corn.” 
“ And yet,” said I, “ a bushel of wheat takes no 
more plant-food out of the soil than a bushel of 
corn. Corn and clover can be grown cheaply on 
good land, simply because they can live and thrive 
on soil that does not contain sufficient available 
plant-food for profitable crops of wheat,barley,etc.” 
“ The experiments published in the American 
Agriculturist for February,” said the Doctor, “ pos¬ 
sess unusual interest. On Mr. Birdsey’s farm, three 
of the plots dressed with nitrogen and phosphoric 
acid, produced 20 bushels of 6helled corn per acre. 
On two other plots, where potash was used alone, 
and with nitrogen and phosphoric acid, the yield 
in both cases was 48 bushels per acre. It seems 
clear that the soil was deficient in potash. It con¬ 
tained enough available nitrogen and phosphoric 
acid to produce 48 bushels of shelled corn per acre, 
and it produced only 20 bushels simply from lack 
of potash. When this was supplied, the yield rose 
up to 48 bushels per acre.” 
“ But this is not by any means a maximum crop,” 
said the Deacon, “ and it is curious that some of 
the plots dressed with nitrogen, phosphoric acid, 
and potash, did not give a larger yield.” 
“The reason,” said I, “seems to be this. The 
60 il was really deficient in available potash. It 
takes nearly 2 lbs. of potash to produce one bushel 
of corn and stalks, cobs, etc. On Plot No. 5, 53)a 
lbs. of potash, 17 lbs. phosphoric acid, and 10? lbs. 
of nitrogen, were sown per acre. This dressing in¬ 
creased the crop 28 bushels per acre. It would 
probably have been more if more potash had been 
applied. The nitrogen and phosphoric acid could 
do no good, because there was not enough potash 
to produce a larger crop. On Plot 3, 160 lbs. of 
potash alone was applied per acre, and the yield 
was no larger than where 531 lbs. were sown. There 
was nitrogen and phosphoric acid enough for only 
48 bushels per acre, and the excess of potash could 
not raise it above this point.” 
“ This experiment,” said the Doctor, “ shows that 
while there are occasionally soils which, owing to 
peculiar treatment, such as the use of bone-dust, 
fish manure, dried blood, etc., are relatively poor in 
potash, and rich in nitrogen and phosphoric acid, 
yet, even in this case, a large and profitable crop 
of com can not be grown by the use of potash alone. 
We need nitrogen and phosphoric acid, in addition 
to the potash, to produce a maximum crop. The cli¬ 
mate or season was probably capable of producing 
70,75, or 80 bushels of corn per acre, and the reason 
why Plot No. 3 produced only 48 bushels was, proba¬ 
bly, due to a lack of nitrogen and phosphoric acid. 
“In Mr. Bartholmew’s experiments,” continued 
the Doctor, “ phosphoric acid seems to have been 
the weak link in the chain. The ‘No Manure’ 
Plot produced about 16 bushels of com per acre ; 
plaster alone increased the yield to over 19 bushels 
per acre. Plaster and 17 lbs. phosphoric acid, in¬ 
creased the crop to over33 bushels per acre; plas¬ 
ter and 251 lbs. of phosphoric acid increased the 
yield to nearly 38 bushels per acre; while plaster 
and 51 lbs. of phosphoric acid increased the yield 
to over 41 bushels per acre. The reason none of 
the plots did not yield over 41 bushels per acre, is 
probably due to a deficiency of nitrogen in the soil. 
In this case, therefore, as in the other, the evidence 
all tends to show that if we want a good, profitable 
crop of corn, we must in some way furnish a liberal 
supply of nitrogen and phosphoric acid. Hen ma¬ 
nure and plaster gave a yield of 561 bushels shelled 
corn per acre.”—“Good,” said the Deacon, “I 
always told you that hen-dung and plaster would 
beat your artificial manures.” 
“ It is a capital manure,” said I, “ but you can 
raise just as large crops of com with artificials as 
with hen manure. What we want is a good supply 
of nitrogen and phosphoric acid.” 
And now, how are we going to get nitrogen and 
phosphoric acid ? It seems clear to my mind that 
we can not afford to pay 20 cents a lb. for nitrogen 
to raise corn at 25 to 50 cents a bushel. Where we 
can get 75 cents a bushel, and can make good use 
of the “stover,” it may pay well to use artificial 
manures for corn, but even in this case I am in¬ 
clined to think it will be better to use the artificial 
manures on some other crop, and plant corn after¬ 
wards to gather up the nitrogen, phosphoric acid, 
and potash that they leave in the soil. 
We can not be too often reminded that it costs 
just as much to plow, harrow, roll, mark-out, plant, 
cultivate, hoe, and cut up an acre of conYthat pro¬ 
duces only 16 bushels, as one that produces 70 
bushels. What we want to ascertain is, how to 
produce good crops. It is all very well to tell us 
that a few pounds of phosphoric acid will increase 
the yield of corn from 16 to 41 bushels per acre, and 
that at 70 cents a bushel the application of this ma¬ 
nure affords a profit of $12 per acre. This is true. 
But we might better say “ if we use the superphos¬ 
phate, the loss of growing corn on such land will 
not be as much by $12 per acre as if we planted the 
field without manure.” 
We must first ascertain how many bushels per 
acre it requires to pay expenses, interest on land, 
etc., and then, if we know how much it costs to in¬ 
crease the yield over and above that amount, we 
can tell whether we are making or losing. 
As far as possible, we should aim to raise corn on 
land naturally rich enough to produce a fair crop 
without manure. If we have a piece of low, rough 
land, that needs nothing but draining and cultiva¬ 
tion to make it rich, there is the place for com. 
Drain this land and get a big crop of corn from it, 
and use the com and stover to feed out and make 
manure for the poorer, upland portions of the farm. 
On good, clean, highly cultivated land, where we 
can use the reaper and mower, it is not clear to my 
mind that corn can be grown to advantage except 
as a “ fallow crop.” If we want to clean the land, 
or if it contains a quantity of plant-food that wheat 
or barley, or potatoes, or hay, can not utilize, we 
may plant corn with great profit. But we should 
rarely plant com on land that is capable of produc¬ 
ing good wheat, barley, potatoes, roots, and hay, 
and where these crops can be sown and harvested 
to advantage, unless it is for the purpose of clean¬ 
ing the land, or for utilizing the plant-food which 
the higher priced crops leave in the soil. I feel 
certain, at any rate, that it will be rarely good man¬ 
agement to raise com on such land, and sell it at 
ordinary prices. We can afford to raise clover on 
our farms, but it is seldom, indeed, that we can af¬ 
ford to sell it. We had better sell timothy hay. It 
takes less from the soil, and brings a higher price. 
So it is with wheat, and barley, and potatoes. Corn 
and clover are grand crops, but unless you have 
new, rich, cheap land, you can not afford, at or¬ 
dinary prices, to raise them to sell. 
Gain of Weight in Good Stock. —It is one of 
the advantages of keeping good stock, that not only 
is more flesh gained for the quantity of food con¬ 
sumed, and a better quality of flesh produced, but 
the waste in the shape of offal is greatly reduced. 
The Shorthorn heifer “Miriam,” bred by Mr. J. 
Stratton, which was awarded first-prize for the 
best female at the Butcher’s show at Islington, 
England, last year, weighed alive 1,868 lbs. The 
