


ee v NEw York AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION. AT 
_ should sell off crops and manure for a like period, the former 
- would maintain or perhaps increase its original fertility, while 
_ the other would sooner or later show evidence of exhaustion in 
_ diminished crops? And yet such is but an experiment often 
tried, and concerning the practical and scientific lesson it teaches 
no one atthe present day can have a doubt. 
In brief, then, it is proposed at the Station to answer for our 
own fields the following question: “How can the farmer gain 
_ clear information about the richness or poverty of his soil in 
__ nitrogen, potash and phosphoric acid ; or in other words, how can 
he determine the special need of manure of each of his fields?” 
om And having, as we have confidence to believe we may, satis- 
 factorily answered this question in our own case, we hope to be 
able to point out our method of securing this valuable 
information to the farmers of the State for their instruction and 
guidance. 
It has seemed, therefore, wise to extend the size of our experi- 
ment plats; in fact, to put the entire fields and crops of the farm, 
so far as means will permit, under experiment, and while this will 
not prevent the growing of large crops we shall have, for example, 
i instead of one crop of ten acres of oats or corn or wheat, ten or 
__ twenty crops of each, and the new barn has been built in part to 
_ provide for the separate storage of these several crops. 
_ In this way it is intended not only to grow crops of grain, of 
_ forage and of roots sufficient for feeding the stock which it is 
_ intended to have in the future, but also to carry forward upon a 
_ more extended scale our various experiments in methods of fertil- 
ization and cultivation. 
_ The climatic conditions prevailing during the past season have 
been almost if not entirely without precedent, and have seriously 
interfered with many of our experiments, which appear to have 
been wisely planned for ordinary conditions, but which have in 
many cases been without valuable results, as the records will 
show. 
Indeed, a careful and complete meteorological record of the 
_ past year would fully explain and anticipate the results in the 
field, and this leads me to call attention to the importance of 
having this portion of the work at the Station fully provided for. 
Effort has been made to carry on these observations, as will be 
een in this report, but there yet remains much more to be done 















