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caution the farmers about at Fall River. He said there are some matters upon which farmers are agreed: let those rest; do not bring them up, and discuss them over and over again. The questions upon which we differ, of course, we must discuss in the future. There are some great questions in farming which we are all agreed upon: for instance, we agree upon thorough tillage. We agree also on the fact, that a generous application of manures and fertilizers in some way is beneficial to the growth of crops; and we agree, that, on many kinds of soil, barnyard-manure is beneficial. I should have said, in the past, that it was agreed that the potato-rot was a fungus-growth; but it seems we are not quite agreed upon that.

I merely rose to say, that, upon that particular field, I raised six hundred bushels of onions to the acre, with less than two pounds of seed.

QUESTION. Have you been troubled with smut?
Mr. PAUL. No, sir.

Mr. PHILBRICK. I have here a scuffle-hoe, which differs from a wheel-hoe in that it has a flat shield instead of a wheel. This shield prevents it from running too deep, very much as the wheel of a plough does. It has a long handle; and a man can go through the rows of a small crop as fast as he can walk. It has also the additional advantage that, when drawn back, it throws the weeds out better than a wheel-hoe.

The gentleman upon my right asked for information about his squashes, which he said troubled him after they got pretty well grown. It is possible that that may have been occasioned by the borer at the root. That is a thing with which we are very much troubled, and it is very much more apt to affect squashes that are planted early than those planted late. I know of no remedy, except that I have known some gardeners to cut out the root which is affected by the borer, and depend entirely upon the roots that strike down from the branches of the squashes. In this way they have got a partial crop.

QUESTION. Does Mr. Philbrick know the origin of the borer?

Mr. PHILBRICK. I do not understand any thing about the borer: it is one of those things that I hope Mr. Farlow will tell us about, or some other gentleman.

QUESTION. Will you tell us what to do with the black bug?

Mr. PHILBRICK. We put a shingle under every hill at night, and the bugs go under the shingle; and early in the morning we go round, and kill them with our fingers.

Mr. FILLEBROWN. I have had some experience in raising squashes; and the difficulty I have found with squashes is, first the yellow bug; and soon after that we find the black bug; and, when the weather becomes wet, we find green lice; and at the root, after that, we find the borers. They eat into and destroy the vine. Some years ago, I discovered a fly that seemed to be pretty busy among the squashes; and I followed it until I saw it light, and saw it lay an egg at the root of the plant; and I soon found that the egg hatched out a maggot, or borer, which commenced to work at the root. These borers have increased very much in the last few years. Last year, if I had not attended to them, I should have had a very small crop. I went over the field, and cut them out with a knife. I think I cut out as many as twenty from one vine, large and small. Some would not be more than a quarter of an inch long, and some of them were an inch long. My boy, who worked with me, said that he cut twenty borers out of one root. You will find the eggs from the root of the vine, where it comes out of the ground, for three or four feet all the way along; and, as soon as they hatch, they commence to eat, just the same as a caterpillar, and, if you take them when they are very small, you can kill them easily.

Mr. PIERCE. I think I know what the borer is; but I would like to ask the gentleman if he does not know some disease that affects squash-vines. Sometimes, when my squashes have grown so that they will weigh six, eight, or ten pounds, the leaf will wilt one day, come up again at night when the dew comes; wilt again the next day, and in a few days it is quite dead; and, if the ground is covered with squash-vines, two-thirds of them will die, and there will be only a very small crop. I am very often troubled in that way. I don't know what it is. It is very easy to lay it to the borer; but that is not the thing which has troubled

me.

Mr. FILLEBROWN. I have seen another insect which

bores into the root. You will find them with their heads in the root, and their bodies out. I have seen them a great many times.

Mr. MURRAY. About twenty years ago, when I built my house up here on the banks of Charles River, I planted a number of melon and cucumber hills; and I found, to my sorrow, that these black squash-bugs were making complete destruction of all my vines. I commenced to kill them; but the smell made me sick. I collected a lot of them, and poured boiling water upon them, and destroyed them in that way. I put shingles down under the vines, as Mr. Philbrick suggests; but I could not stand killing the disgusting insect. I thought, if I lived another year, I would try another experiment, which I did live to try, and very successfully. I found that tobacco was very repugnant to these black bugs; and, when I found they did not like it, I went into Boston, and bought about a barrel of tobacco-stems from the cigar-makers, and took a quantity of those stems, and cut them up with a hatchet upon a block, as you would cut up hay to feed horses; and then I collected it all in a basket, and went to my melon and cucumber vines, and laid it about two inches thick all around my vines. I watched the process very closely to see what would be the result, whether those fellows loved tobacco or not. I never had a better crop of melons in my life than I had that year. I had no trouble whatever with the black rascal. came near me; or, if he did, he kept out of my sight. It is a very cheap experiment. I think I paid half a cent a pound for all I wanted, besides the expense of bringing it up by

express.

He never

QUESTION. I would like to inquire if there are any here who have had any experience in raising French turnips with the Stockbridge formula for turnips. I am a little one-horse farmer on the sands of Cape Cod, where we raise turnips. I manured a little piece with the Stockbridge Fertilizer, and they grew very well, and looked handsome; but, when I came to harvest them for market, I found they were worthless as a table turnip. They were watery, and tasted very turnipy. What I wanted to inquire was, if there had been any trouble in manuring with the Stockbridge Fertilizer for turnips. I do not know but the trouble was with the soil; but I am in doubt, and want information..

Mr. I experimented a little with the Stockbridge Fertilizer this year on turnips, and I found the same difficulty as the gentleman who has preceded me. They were watery, while those sowed on manure were not. The outward appearance of the turnips was very much the same. I would like to ask Professor Goessmann if he can give any explanation.

Professor GOESSMANN. The Stockbridge Fertilizer contains no ingredients injurious to plants. It contains the elements. essential to plant-growth; but, without knowing the condition of the soil and the specific treatment, it is very difficult to give an opinion in regard to any particular case.

Mr. HASTINGS of Framingham. I have a neighbor who came from Arlington, where he had cultivated a small piece of land as a market-garden for a few years. His land was very rich; and he used nothing when he occupied it but fertilizers of some kind, — no barnyard-manure. His land was in excellent condition anyway, without the fertilizers. He moved out into my neighborhood, and took some land that was ordinarily good farming-land, but had never been manured for gardening. I told him, when he commenced, that I did not believe he could afford to buy that land to raise vegetables on; but he thought he could. He had told me how much he had raised in Arlington upon a certain piece of land. I told him I thought he would find a great deal of difference between the land where he was and the land in Arlington. He talked with some of my neighbors who were carting stablemanures about a mile and a half, and he says, "You are carting eighty-five per cent of water. You might just as well throw that away, save your team, labor, and expense, and buy fertilizers." He went on with this market-gardening, using fertilizers of some kind; and he had very poor success. The next year he got barnyard-manure almost entirely, bought it wherever he could, and raised better crops than he did the year before.

Three or four years ago, I read so much in the papers about fertilizers, and how much could be raised by their use, that I thought I would try a few kinds. I got some of the Brighton Fertilizer, and then got something that they called German salts. I got also two kinds of guano, which I used, mixed with loam. I put them on about the first of June; and,

where I put the Brighton Fertilizer, it was not more than a week before I could see quite a difference. The grass looked greener than it did anywhere else. The next year I sowed some mangels, and dug in some of this Brighton Fertilizer with the other manure; and I got a great crop, although I did not weigh or measure to see how much there was. This year I planted some mangels on the same ground, putting on nothing but barnyard-manure, and the crop was very much poorer both in quantity and size; so that I think it will be a great help when the land is highly manured. I do not think it will do much if any good in raising a crop of vegetables or any thing else, unless the land is well manured before it is put on.

Mr. E. B. SMITH of Waltham. I have thought that perhaps one trouble with our meeting this afternoon was, that the farmers of Arlington, knowing a great deal, just take it for granted that every one else knows as much as they do; and therefore they have not considered it necessary to begin at the beginning, and tell the process of raising some of the principal crops. I should have been very much pleased to know their method of preparing the ground for the growth of squashes, melons, spinach, and other garden-crops. I hope, that, in the short time that remains this afternoon, we shall hear some of the farmers of Arlington, and that they will describe their method of preparing and caring for some of these principal crops.

Mr. HUMPHREY. I am interested, in a small way, in marketgardening. Although I am more than fifteen miles from Boston, yet we have scattered along our valleys a population that must be fed; and to these people I cater, in a small way. Being some distance from market, I raise some of the more substantial vegetables, onions, cabbages, and potatoes; and I find that they are remunerative crops. I hail from that district, where, for some years past, the raising of tobacco has been almost universal, and where almost all the other crops have suffered from the partiality shown to that one crop. But circumstances have changed; and we have been obliged to turn our attention to some other branch of farming. Some have gone back to the old corn-fields and broom-corn, and fattening cattle; others, like myself, have gone into marketgardening; while a few continue to raise tobacco. I find, that.

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