GRIMSLEY. | Gypsum as a Fertilizer. 125 
in 1768 by a German clergyman by name of Mayer, of Kupfer- 
zell, in Hohenlohe, who noted that it had long been in use near 
Gottingen as a top dressing for young clover. ‘Tscheffeli, the 
Swiss agriculturist, also used it with considerable success. Af- 
ter this time there were numerous experiments made to test its 
efficiency, and the implicit faith of the workers along this line 
gaye the appearance of wonderful results. 
Use in Maryland. 
Thus, the early farmers of Maryland, according to Rees, used 
eypsum fertilizer with great success, and this writer states that 
‘‘Tt was most beneficial on high and sandy soils and had good effect on wheat, 
rye, barley, peas, potatoes, cabbage, clover, and all natural grass crops. The in- 
variable result of the several experiments incontestably proves that there is a 
most powerful and subtle principle in this tasteless stone, but by what peculiar 
agency or combination it is capable of forcing vegetation in such an instantaneous 
and astonishing manner is a mystery which time reserves for others to unfold.’’ 
Even at the present day the writer has found a farmer who in- 
sists that repeated trials have shown him that gypsum placed 
upon land where potatoes were planted served to keep away the 
troublesome bugs. If this could only be proved a very impor- 
tant problem in potato culture would be solved, and much time 
and work be saved; but, unfortunately, observation classes this 
promising discovery with the preceding experience of the early 
Maryland farmers, and potato-bugs will have to be driven away 
with something besides gypsum. 
Benjamin Franklin called attention to the value of gypsum 
as a fertilizer for grass, by sowing the land plaster in a clover 
field near one of the main roads in Pennsylvania so as to form 
the sentence ‘‘ This has been plastered with gypsum,”’ and the 
letters, it is said, could be detected readily by the hight and 
color of the clover where the gypsum had been sown. 
Kuffin’s Experiments. 
Ruffin, in his book on Calcareous Manures,* written in 1832, 
states that 
‘‘There is no operation of nature heretofore less understood or of which the 
cause or agent seems so totally disproportioned to the effect as the enormous in- 
46. Page 151. 
