126 University Geological Survey of Kansas. 
crease of vegetable growth from a very small quantity of gypsum in circumstances 
favorable to its action. All other manures, whatever may be the nature of their 
action, require to be applied in quantities very far exceeding any bulk of crop ex- 
pected from their use. But one bushel of gypsum spread over an acre of land fit 
for its action may add more than twenty times its own weight to a single crop of 
clover hay.’’ 
Jchnson’s Experiments. 
In 1841 Mr. C. W. Johnson wrote for the Royal Agricultural 
Society of England a prize essay entitled ‘‘An Account of the 
Application of Gypsum as a Manure to the Artificial Grasses.’’ 
He quotes in this paper a letter from Mr. James Barnard, a 
farmer in Hampshire, which gives some account of experi- 
ments with gypsum fertilizer, as follows: 
‘‘The soil of my farm is of a clayey nature and would be very stiff but for the 
number of stones there are in it. I have sown gypsum six or seven years and 
never on clover or saintfoin without satisfactory proof of its efficacy, having 
usually grown one-half ton more of hay per acre by its use. But the effect in 
1838 was wonderful. I put on a bag (23 cwt.) per acre on a two-year-old piece of 
saintfoin on the Ist of May with the plants very forward, just leaving the ground 
and coming to stalk; the gypsum had so increased the growth of the grass by 
the 9th of the same month that when crossing the land with a friend we observed 
the difference from one of the fields to the other; and at harvest time the extra 
produce of hay was quite one ton peracre. I then laid the field up and cut it again 
in October, when the effect of the gypsum was still more apparent, there being 
one and a quarter tons of hay per acre from the so dressed portion of the field and 
scarcely any on the remainder of the last. Cutting the saintfoin twice in one 
year and the enormous difference in the produce brought a great many persons 
to look at the field, who all declared they had never seen the like before. On the 
same piece this year (1839) I did not use gypsum, thinking it would be good 
enough without, and the difference was quite as great. I mowed twice the gyp- 
sumed portion, but there was nothing to cut on that which had not the gypsum. 
I can even see the effect where three years ago the gypsum was spread. I always 
leave a strip or two in every field to prove the effect. There is one thing more If 
wish to observe, that I never put in gypsum before the last week in April or first 
in May, and choose if possible a moist morning. I have not found much good 
effect from its application on either chalk or cold clay soils.” 
Boussingault’s Experiments. 
Boussingault, in 1841, spread gypsum over a clover field, and 
then analyzed the clover from the land where gypsum was 
spread and where it had not been spread. He found a great 
increase in amount of ash, which represented an increase in all 
the mineral constituents, but especially in lime, magnesia, and 
