each other; and, instead of being small, they were larger than I should suppose anybody would want for market, although the large onions will sell best, after all, though they are not so good. One of my neighbors directly across the ditch, on the same sort of land, sowing his onions the same day, and applying the Stockbridge Fertilizer to his field, which I did not, did not get a quarter as many as I did; and his were all small. I could account for it in no other way except by the special fertilizer that I applied for onions. There were some eight hundred bushels. Of course, Mr. Ware would say it was only an ordinary crop of onions down in his section. There were some rows saved for celery, which was not good for much. It was pretty good the 1st of July; but the 1st of September it was not so good. I was only sorry that I did not sow onions on the whole field, because I have no doubt that the onions grown on the same ground would have netted me much more than the celery did.

QUESTION. Will you tell us what that special fertilizer was that you used?

The CHAIRMAN. I used sulphate of potash.

QUESTION. In what method?

The CHAIRMAN. It did not come along quick enough, so that I could put it on when I prepared the ground: so I sowed it immediately on the top of the ground.

QUESTION. No harrowing in at all?

The CHAIRMAN. No harrowing in at all.

QUESTION. What quantity?

The CHAIRMAN. One thousand pounds to the acre." I have learned better than to expect to raise a large crop on nothing. I can't do it.

QUESTION. What amount of seed did your neighbor

use?

The CHAIRMAN. He sowed the same kind of seed. I got the seed for him. His was sown too thick, but not so thick as the first of mine. The first quarter of an acre of mine was a good deal thicker than the rest. I suppose, if I had not put on the potash, I should have had small onions. I suppose every market-gardener, and every farmer, knows that there is no better fertilizer for onions than wood-ashes. Well, it is simply the potash that is the important thing for the onions therefore, as I said before, I endeavor to supply

plenty of manure to start with, and then a sufficient quantity of the fertilizer adapted to the special crop that I am going to grow; and the question as to what fertilizer is adapted to the crop must depend, I think, upon the farmer himself. Knowing his land, and following what Professor Goessmann and the chemists tell us of the wants of the dif ferent crops, he must judge of that himself, and buy those fertilizers in a crude form, use them, and find his own brains. I do not know any other way. No man can do it for him. I do not believe you could have it done even by Professor Goessmann, who is, perhaps, the most talented chemist, certainly in the agricultural way, that there is in Massachusetts, to say the least.

QUESTION. Are you able to tell us whether you made any money on those potatoes that you carried into Boston, and sold at seventy-five cents a barrel?

The CHAIRMAN. I got as much as anybody did. I found other persons did not get as much as I did, and went home perfectly satisfied.

QUESTION. Did you make any money out of it?

The CHAIRMAN. I did not.

QUESTION. Did you make any money on the butter you sold for twelve or thirteen cents a pound?

The CHAIRMAN. No; but I had to take it.

QUESTION. But you laid the foundation for making money?

The CHAIRMAN. It taught me better than to sell in that

way.

Mr. COOLIDGE. There is one thing I wanted to ask during this discussion, when the gentlemen were talking about mildew on spinach and other crops. I have been afflicted severely the last two or three years with a disease among my spinach, very much resembling, in my judgment, the mildew on lettuce, although I can discover nothing that looks like mildew. I have got a great deal of spinach sown, and that which I sowed earliest, with the intent of cutting and harvesting it for winter use, looks as it will sometimes in the spring of the year, only a good deal whiter. Three-quarters of it, I think, is dead, to all appearance. It commences to turn yellow after it gets through its growth; and the trouble increases on the early-grown spinach until it is entirely

destroyed. I have got from half to three-quarters of an acre that is worthless, apparently, that I intended to harvest for winter-marketing. Supposing, at one time, that the difficulty could be obviated by sowing later, I tried the experi ment; but I find the same trouble on the spinach that is barely up. If any gentleman will tell me what it is, and what will prevent it, it would gratify me very much.

66

As to instructing anybody, I am in the same condition as Mr. Rawson. I cannot tell any such story as that in the Ploughman," about my farm; but I have one satisfaction, when we get together Thanksgiving-day evening, there is a good crop in the house. I have got that, and, if it is worth nothing to anybody else, it is worth very much to me.

Dr. WAKEFIELD. I have had some experience in years past; and I gave the result last year of some considerable number of experiments made on roots with different kinds of fertilizers compared with barnyard-manure.

-

I have satisfied myself on this point, from my experience in years gone by, that every farmer should husband his barnyard-manure, and make, from every possible source that he can, additions to his manure-heap. He should not lose any thing because fertilizers are cheap, or because he can hasten a crop, and bring it to maturity by them alone. I believe experience has taught me this, that, having saved and utilized all his manure, any farmer can use fertilizers to advantage. I have no doubt, indeed I know from experience, that many of these fertilizers do not possess the properties which they are stated to possess, and they are failures; but I believe that the principle enunciated by the professor at Amherst is a correct one, that each crop takes out from the land certain ingredients, and that those have to be furnished, if they are not in the land. Soils contain a certain amount of the ingredients which every crop takes up; but, if the land has not enough of them, and no land within my knowledge has enough of them to last forever, the prairie-lands of the West, or the rich bottom-lands of Massachusetts, will not stand cropping forever, they must be supplied by man or nature. Take the wheat-lands of New York, which, when I was a boy, produced much larger crops than they do now; take the tobacco-lands of Virginia, which, years ago, pro

duced that crop in exuberance, but which have now run out, the crops grown on those lands have taken from them more of the special materials used by the crops than has been returned, or than Nature has furnished. That is the way with the crops here in Massachusetts. Massachusetts has not a soil which will bear cropping for any length of time without putting any thing on, and whatever is taken out should be annually restored. Now, Professor Stockbridge has shown us, by chemical analysis, that certain plants take out certain things. Barnyard-manure we all know from experience, and it has been taught us from our earliest boyhood, will produce any crop, almost. If you have enough of that, you can use it, and add to it, as Capt. Moore does, a special fertilizer; so that, if you get your onion-seed three or four deep, it will throw them all up as big as your fist, one on the top of the other. If that nine pounds of seed had not found any more manure underneath it than most of us usually put in the ground, he would have had a crop of small onions; but he knew, having begun with selling butter at twelve cents a pound, that he had got to do something better than that. He has learned that. There is the great advantage of special fertilizers. I believe that every farmer can take his barnyard-manure, and then, if he wants a larger crop, he can afford to buy a fertilizer which contains those properties which the crop requires, and which are constantly consumed, from year to year, and can thus make it pay.

In the experiments I made last year, comparing the crops produced by barnyard-manure with those produced by the Stockbridge Fertilizer, — such crops as onions, beets, mangels, corn, and potatoes, the advantage was always on the side of the fertilizer, with one single exception. I cannot state the figures here; but you have them in the Report of last year. The advantage in regard to price and in regard to the amount of crop was, with one exception, in favor of the fertilizer. I did not try the experiment year after year, so as to know whether the effect of the fertilizer will continue. It was asserted last year at these meetings, that the corn-crop where this Stockbridge Fertilizer had been put in increased from year to year. I believed that was established as a fact. I thought there was evidence enough to convince me that that was true. Now I learn that this year it has not

come up to that. I do not know that it is a fact; but I have been told that the Sturtevants over in Framingham have failed in their crop of corn planted this year with the fertilizer. If that is a fact, every farmer in Massachusetts would like to know it. I supposed it was settled that we could use the fertilizer year after year, and the land would not deteriorate any more than it will if barnyard-manure is used in sufficient quantities to produce a good crop.

I was satisfied from the experience I had had, and from the experiments which had been reported at this Board from year to year by Professor Stockbridge and others, and it was tried last year on thousands of acres, that it could be used as well as barnyard-manure. Now, if it has proved a failure this year, so that the general principle which I had supposed to be established will not apply, we all want to know it. If anybody else has compared barnyard-manure with the special fertilizer this year, whether the result coincides with my experiments, or goes counter to them, I want to know it: every one wants to know it. What we all want to get at is the facts.

Mr. PAUL of Dighton. I wish to say one word in regard to the raising of onions. I will say that I have attended the meetings of the Board now for six or seven years in succession, and, if any thing has struck me as I have been looking on, it has been that there is so much difference of opinion among farmers on every subject which is brought up. I was forcibly struck with that fact when the statement was made in regard to the quantity of onion-seed sown on an acre. I planted an onion-field this year; and, in my ignorance; I did not know that mice would destroy onion-seed. The seed I planted on a part of that field was exposed, and the mice got into them; and I think not quite half as many came up on that portion of the field as on the balance. On the whole field I put four pounds and a half; and on that portion of the field where not more than one-half of the seed came up,

that is, about two pounds to the acre, there were more bushels of onions than on the balance of the field, where there were four pounds to the acre.

I would suggest one thing here, although, perhaps, it is a little out of place, in regard to those points where we differ so much; and it is the same thing that I heard Dr. Nichols