Wisconsin State Agricultural Society. 20 ,5 
soil East. I knew a man, his name was Allen too—who come in 
there and bought a ver}' poor farm that he was satisfied would not 
raise white beans; but there was a lime quarry on it, and he said 
he was going to burn lime, and he did, and put it on his land in 
large quantities, and in less than five years he had the best grow¬ 
ing farm there was in the county. 
Mr. Allen". About 15 years ago I had a lime kiln and I scat¬ 
tered a few loads of that lime on my soil, and I can say that I can 
use plaster with much more profit. There is no sort of comparison 
between them. 
Mr. J. W. Wood. I will give a short experience in the use of 
plaster. The first year that I used it, I sowed it after my clover 
was half knee high. I intended to do it earlier, but the clover was 
pretty thick and began to look yellow, and I sowed the plaster in a 
dry time at the rate of a bushel on four acres; and for the purpose 
of testing it a neighbor had a piece of clover adjoining mine, with a 
fence between, and I without his knowledge got over and sowed in 
his clover for a little wav, and after a while I told him I had com- 
mitted a trespass and had put some plaster on his field, and I want¬ 
ed him to find it, and in ten days the clover had changed its appear¬ 
ance and was growing ranker and greener, and as some of my 
neighbors could probably testify, there was twice the growth 
of clover produced where that plaster had fallen upon it. And it 
was so with the plaster I sowed on my neighbors piece, and you 
could tell even the motions I made in sowing on that man’s land in the 
growth of the clover. And by the way, that same year I had some 
wheat and seeded the land to clover, and the clover was up, and the 
wheat, oats and barley were knee high. Isowel a strip clear through 
and back across the three kinds of grain, and I saw no particular differ¬ 
ence in the crop; but the next year I took our Farmers’ Club out 
to see where the plaster was sown, and they could pick out where I 
went and there was double the growth of clover where I sowed the 
plaster the year before. And accordingly some of the members of 
our Club took a notionto sow plaster with their wheat this spring; 
but I don’t know whether it did much good to my own clover or 
not, but my clover was small in the fall. But a neighbor of mine 
who owned this land where I sowed plaster the year before, sowed 
plaster with his clover about ten days later than I did, and his seed¬ 
ing entirely failed and he plowed it up again; so that while Mr. 
