218 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[June, 
Walks and Talks on the Farm—No. 138. 
[COPYRIGHT SECURED.} 
“I believe,” writes Geo. Geddesinthe “Country 
Gentleman,” “that Mr. Lawes’ largest crops of 
■wheat cost him more per bushel than those of 
medium yield.”—Mr. Geddes should take time to 
study the experiments at Rotliamstead, and their 
practical bearing, before he makes such a state¬ 
ment. There is no profit there, nor here, nor any¬ 
where in poor farming. “ Extremes are almost 
always costly,” continues Mr. G., “and ordinary 
farmers can not safely take the risk involved in the 
attempt to raise the last possible bushel of grain, 
or to raise the largest steer that ever went to the 
butcher. We must follow safer methods, and 
depend more upon average results.”—I have said 
the same thing a great many times; only that I 
want the “average result” to be a great deal 
higher and better than they now are, either on my 
own farm or on that of Mr. Geddes. “ We try to 
read all that the men who are devoting themselves 
to scientific investigation,” continues Mr. G., 
“ write for our instruction, and we try to learn 
something from each other’s doings. But when we 
read in ‘ Walks and Talks on the Farm,’ that the 
manurial value of a ton of clover hay is $15.82, we 
are silent out of respect to the high source from 
which we receive the information ; and we con¬ 
clude that when the owner of Moreton Farm has 
drained all his land, removed all stones and other 
obstructions, and once thoroughly cultivated every 
part of his wide fields, and fed out many hundred 
tons of clover hay to his stock, and carefully saved 
and applied the manure made for many long years, 
he will probably arrive at the same conclusions 
that have been reached by those who have already 
had this experience.”—I have no doubt this is true, 
but who are the men that have had this experience ? 
John Johnston is one of them, and we all know that 
he has found it eminently profitable. And though 
84 years of age yesterday (April, 11th), he is just 
as enthusiastic in regard to the pleasures and 
profits of good farming, as he ever was. 
Mr. Geddes some months since gave an account 
of two fields of wheat—one after barley, and the 
other after summer-fallow. He thought the re¬ 
sults showed that it was not profitable to summer- 
fallow. I endeavored to show that the experiment 
did not prove this. I did not, and I do not now 
wish to be understood as advocating the practice 
of summer-fallowing, indiscriminately. It is only 
the principles involved that I care anything about. 
Practices are changed or modified by circumstances, 
but principles are as true here as in Onondaga Co. 
It may not pay Mr. Geddes to summer-fallow. I 
do not say that it will, or that it will not. He must 
be his own judge. If he says it does not pay, I 
should never think of disputing him. But when 
he assails a fundamental and important principle of 
scientific agriculture, much as I dislike controversy, 
I am willing to defend the truth. When Colonel 
Waving intimated that Dr. Voelcker’s experiments 
indicated that there was a loss of nitrogen when a 
soil was repeatedly stirred and exposed to the at¬ 
mosphere, Mr. Geddes hastened to bring forward 
facts in confirmation. The facts I cared nothing 
about. But the principle involved was too impor¬ 
tant to be given up without positive proof. I show¬ 
ed very conclusively, as I think, that the experi¬ 
ments of Dr. Voelcker did not prove that there 
was any loss of nitrogen, or other valuable plant- 
food, from exposing the soil to the atmosphere. 
And I must do Col. Waring the justice to say that 
after talking with Dr. Voelcker, he has been candid 
enough to admit all that I claimed on this point. 
In other words, so far as these experiments go, 
there is no evidence of a loss of fertilizing matter 
by stirring and exposing the soil.—But Mr. Geddes 
still sticks to his facts. My next move was to 
show that these facts did not prove what was claim¬ 
ed for them. 1 do not say that they prove the 
truth of my posit ions. In fact, to be strictly candid, 
I do not think they prove anything. Mr. Geddes 
seems to think so too ; for he now calls a meeting 
of twenty of his neighbors, and they have a talk 
on summer-fallowing. “ All of them,” says Mr. 
G., “ are raisers of wheat, and but one of them has 
wheat growing on land that was last year summer- 
fallowed.”—What of that? I could get twenty 
wheat-growers here, none of whom practice sum¬ 
mer fallowing. And they are men of full average 
intelligence. Perhaps it is my misfortune, but it 
never occurs to me that a scientific question can be 
decided like a political one, by the majority of 
votes. If Mr. Geddes and his twenty neighbors 
are satisfied with their system of farming, I have 
no right to complain. But there are some of us 
who are looking for something better; we want 
larger.crops, better stock, cleaner land, and greater 
profits. We want to keep some of our boys at 
home on the farm. We do not want all of them to 
be lawyers, doctors, merchants, engineers, contrac¬ 
tors, mechanics, and manufacturers. We are in¬ 
voking the aid of science,and never in the history 
of agriculture, probably, were so many men with 
trained intellects investigating the laws of hus¬ 
bandry. But Science does not give us recipes, she 
gives us principles, and leaves us to apply them. 
She will not help a lazy, shiftless, careless farmer. 
But to the real industrious, energetic, thoughtful, 
painstaking man, who is willing to learn and ready 
to practice, she is prepared to give hints which 
will add greatly to his comfort and profits. 
Science does not say to such a man, “ summer- 
fallow.” This would be quackery. She does not 
say “ raise clover and plow it under.” She does not 
say “ underdrain.” She does not say “ plow deep¬ 
er.” She does not say “plow shallower, or with 
this or that kind of furrow.” She says: “be a 
man, think for yourself, study, observe, experiment. 
Help yourself and I will help you. Take hold ; 
wake up ; push ahead. Do not be satisfied with 
what you know, or with what your neighbors know. 
They will laugh at you. Heed them not. You 
may fail at first', but you shall prosper in the end. 
There are great improvements to be made. There 
is much to be learned.” 
The Deacon stopped me. “ I don’t see what you 
are driving at,” he said, “ Mr. Geddes is wise to call 
in his experienced neighbors, and ask them whether 
he had better summer-fallow or sow barley as a 
preparation for wheat. ‘ In the multitude of coun¬ 
selors there is wisdom.’”—“A Deacon should 
quote scripture correctly,” I replied, “ it is ‘in 
multitude of counselors there is safety,' and I have 
no doubt these counselors gave Mi - . Geddes very 
safe advice. ‘ Do as you have done,’ they say, ‘ fol¬ 
low the old beaten track.’ ” 
This is safe advice. I have no objection to it. All 
I have to say is, there is a better way. The system 
of farming recommended by Mr. Geddes, as I un¬ 
derstand it, is not economical. We do not make 
the best use of our materials. We waste seed, 
labor, and food. We can not afEord to raise beef,® 
he tells us, and at the same time he recommends 
us to plow under our crops of clover. I have 
heard him say he does not sell straw 7 , but scatters 
it around the yards by wagon-loads at a time; and 
then he laughs at me for saying a ton of clover hay 
(say 5 tons of green clover) is worth $9.64 for 
manure. And this, by the way, I never have said, 
all I say is this: If a ton of wheat-straw is worth 
$2.68 for manure, then a ton of clover hay, or five 
tons of green clover, is worth $9.64. I have never 
said that clover hay is worth $15.82 per ton for 
manure. All I have said is that if nitrogen, phos¬ 
phoric acid, and potash, are worth so and so per 
pound, .then clover hay contains enough of these 
valuable ingredients of plant-food, to make it 
worth $15.82. 
Does Mr. Geddes buy artificial manures?—Do 
not some of his neighbors use them ?—Thousands 
and tens of thousands of tons are sold, and I hope 
and believe more and more will be used every year. 
Mr. Geddes tells us that his neighbors are good and 
intelligent farmers. I can say the same thing of 
mine, I do not know a better farming section. I 
say nothing of the Deacon and myself, except that 
we are improving. But a mile or two away from 
us, there is as good land, and as good farmers as 
any in the state. These men have been buying 
superphosphate at $45 per ton, to sow on their 
wheat; and this winter one of them sold me choice 
early cut clover hay at $10 per ton, and the day I 
visited him, he had been scattering straw about the 
yards and sheds two feet thick, to get rid of it, 
and “ make it into manure.” This man has got a 
fine farm, and he is an intelligent, enterprising, 
and what we call a successful farmer. But I do 
not hesitate to say that such farming is not 
economical. I do not think the farmers in this 
fine section, with land worth from $125 to $200 per 
acre, average more than 125 bushels of potatoes 
per acre ; 35 bushels shelled corn ; 25 bushels of 
barley, and 20 bushels of wheat. Does the best 
town in Mr. Geddes’s neighborhood average any 
more ? and with such crops oh such land, does a 
well educated, active, and industrious farmer get 
adequate compensation for his time, care, labor, 
and capital ? If not, why not ? My answer is 
because our crops are not large enough per acre. And 
I am happy to say that I have received hundreds of 
letters from farmers in different parts of the 
United States and Canada, telling me that my point 
is well taken. 
Now how are we to get larger crops per acre? 
The atmosphere perhaps furnishes us all the car¬ 
bonic acid which plants require ; and the rains and 
dews furnish us a small quantity of nitrogen; but 
not nearly as much as we need to produce large 
crops. Nitrogen, phosphoric acid, potash, etc., 
are annually developed from the soil. The amount 
so furnished, varies greatly according to the char¬ 
acter of the land. On light sandy soil it may not 
be sufficient to furnish food for more than a quar¬ 
ter of a ton of hay, or 5 bushels of wheat to the 
acre ; or it may be sufficient on some soils to fur¬ 
nish food enough for a ton of hay, or 20 bushels of 
wheat an acre. Whatever the amount is, that is 
what I call the normal yield of the soil; cultivation 
may accelerate the development. It may procure 
us a larger quantity in a t given time. A meadow 
which produces less that half a ton of hay to the 
acre, if plowed up, well worked, and seeded down 
again, may give us two tons to the acre. This is 
due in a good degree to the decomposition of the 
roots, which have been formed from the slowly 
developed matter in the soil for some years past. 
This is not the normal supply of plant-food. 
In Mr. Lawes’ experimental wheat field, the an¬ 
nual yield of wheat for over thirty years, without 
manure of any kind, and the crop of grain and 
straw all removed, has been about 15 bushels per 
acre. This is the normal yield of wheat on that 
soil, with two plowings each year, and hoeing be¬ 
tween the drills, to keep the crop clean. I have 
used this well established fact to illustrate what 
Mr. Geddes calls my “pet theory of the advantages 
of raising, at long intervals, large crops of wheat 
by summer-fallowing.” I hope the careful readers 
of the Agriculturist understand my views better 
than to limit this theory merely to summer-fallow¬ 
ing. That is only one of the means I have suggest¬ 
ed. Raising clover, peas, mangels, turnips, mus¬ 
tard, rape, corn, oats, rye, buckwheat, and grass, 
and feeding them out on the farm, carefully saving 
and returning the manure, is just as much one of 
my “pet theories.” The principle is the same. 
What I contend for is, that we must iu some way 
get a greater accumulation of available plant-food 
in the soil, especially for our best paying crops, 
and those which require the largest amount of 
labor to the acre. There are but two ways of doing 
this ; 1st. Buy the plant-food. This we can do in 
artificial fertilizers. The nitrogen in this form will 
cost us 20 to 30 cents per pound. We can also 
buy stable manure from the cities. We can also 
buy hay from such of our neighbors as are willing 
to sell, or bran, oilcake, grain, and other foods, and 
feed it out to cattle, sheep, and pigs. There are 
some who can get fish, sea-weed, swamp muck, etc. 
2nd. We can get this accumulation of plant-food, 
by saving that which is annually developed from 
the soil. And it is right here that we need all the 
aid which science and experience can furnish us. 
It is the starting point of good farming. If you 
have a good, calcareous clayey soil like that of Mr. 
Lawes’, which will produce 15 bushels of wheat 
per acre every year, I contend that it is poor farm- 
