ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN’S ASSOCIATION. 89 
Commercial 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- 
cieased the yield fully forty per cent. It was applied to the 
surface and cultivated in. Common salt gave equally good 
Jesuits. 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. 
4 
Judge Lawrence : Wanted to say a word against the 
use of artificial' fertilizers. He had lately been traveling 
tin-, farms in New fYork. 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 
f 
