316 Wisconsin State Agricultural Society. 
land and making it hard, is favorable for guarding against the 
chinch-bug. 
Mr. Anderson: I claim there is no amount of rolling or slicking 
will keep them from it. 
Mr. Robbins: I sowed five tons of plaster last spring. I never 
sowed any before. There had never been any sown in that part of 
Grant county, where I reside, that I know of. In fact, I don’t 
know of any being used in our county, until this year. I sent to 
Milwaukee for ten tons and I let a neighbor have half of it. I 
sowed five tons myself. I had forty acres, that 3 7 ear before last I 
sowed to wheat and flax. I got ten bushels of wheat to the acre 
and five bushels of flax. I seeded it down the year previous. I 
got about forty loads of hay off of the forty acres. I sowed my 
plaster on this forty" acres of clover in June, one hundred pounds 
to the acre. Had it sowed all by hand, and a man sowed sixteen 
acres a day. In cutting it last year we got over one hundred and 
twenty loads of hay. We got three loads of hay last 3 "ear off of 
the same piece of ground where one only was produced the 3 r ear 
before. My neighbor said it wouldn’t be a fair comparison, from 
the fact that last year was a wet 3 T ear, and the year before a dr 3 T 
3 T ear. I had eight acres of clover three years before, which 3 7 ielded 
three bushels of seed to the acre. Half of that, four acres, I sowed 
plaster on, and the result was a double crop, although it had been 
in clover for five years. You could tell to the very foot where I 
had sown my plaster. Neighbors, coming up through it, would 
say, “What makes that look so much greener than the other?” 
The experiment with me was perfectly satisfactory. I planted six¬ 
teen acres of corn, putting manure on a part, ashes on a part, and 
plaster on a part. Where I put my plaster I couldn’t see a parti¬ 
cle of difference in the harvest of corn. I couldn’t see there was 
an ear more to the row where I put my plaster and where I didn’t. 
That may have been because it was a cold year. Where I put the 
manure I could see it to the very row. The ashes, also, improved 
the crop. They were leached ashes. It was all old stubble-ground 
where I had had oats the 3 7 ear before. 
Question: What time did 3 7 ou apply the plaster? 
Mr. Robbins: I applied it in June, and right at the roots of the 
corn; put it on the hill with a little paddle—about a tablespoonful 
to each hill. I paid $6.50 a ton in Milwaukee, and it cost $10.50 in 
