128 BULLETIN OF THE BUSSEY INSTITUTION. 
secondly, the fact that somewhat better results had almost always 
been obtained from wood-ashes in the previous years than from the 
simple potash-salts ; and finally, that not even the heaviest application 
of wood-ashes had given crops so good as those obtained from several 
of the squares on Sections A and AA that had been treated with 
limes. I did not know until the autumn of 1873 how very much 
richer than the rest of the field the soil of Sections A and AA really 
was. At the time when the mixtures above mentioned were com- 
pounded, I was laboring under the impression that the good results 
obtained upon Sections A and AA in 1871 and 1872 were to be 
wholly ascribed to manure that had been applied to the land in 1870. 
But the continued good results obtained even in 1873, after three 
years’ severe cropping, have convinced me that the land at that end 
of the field must either have been occupied as a garden in past years 
or have been on some special occasion drenched and overloaded with 
fertilizing materials. It need hardly be urged that the conduct of 
the experiments would have been materially different if the fact of 
the excessive richness of the land of Sections A and AA could only 
have been known earlier. 
The crops grown upon Squares J, JJ, K, and KK cannot be com- 
pared with those from the squares of Sections EE, G, and H ; since 
it was observed that a large part of the soil of each of the squares 
first mentioned was in very bad condition. Throughout the entire 
season it could be seen that while the crops grew as well upon parts 
of each of these squares as they did upon the squares of EE, they 
languished upon the remaining portions. It was manifest that injury 
had been done in some way to a strip of land running through the 
Squares J and JJ, K and KK. Iam uncertain whether the trouble 
may not have been caused by the exposure of subsoil in previous 
years by dead furrows that perhaps passed through the place now 
occupied by these squares, or whether the ground had not become 
compacted by the passage of carts that were employed in 1872 
in hauling loam from a neighboring field for the use of the Horti- 
cultural Department. Whatever the cause from which the land 
had suffered, it was found that the injury had not been repaired 
in a single year by the careful spading to which the land was sub- 
jected. 
