combe, has made the remarks he has about fertilizers. My experience is much the same as his in this respect. I have used marl to cover my manure with. Plaster, I believe, is also very good for the same purpose.

His remarks go to confirm the remarks I made this morning in regard to our county boards. He has also honored Salem county, by acknowledging that he has found something good in it. I am in favor of reciprocity among farmers, as well as among other classes.

`I think we should be more willing to exchange with each other when we have something good, and something which will benefit our neighbors in other counties. We are going to ask him still more questions, although he has told us a good many things already.

We

He is also at liberty to ask us as many questions as he may desire. We will answer them if we can. We shall be glad to reciprocate with him, and hope he will be willing to reciprocate with us. would also like to have fuller reports from the county boards next year, though this Board must recognize the fact that it takes a good deal of time, and no little patience, for the secretaries of the different county boards and associations to prepare the statistics which we are all so anxious to hear. It also requires a great deal of patience to gather this information from the different members of their boards. We propose to compensate these secretaries for this work, recognizing, as we do, the amount of labor required. The work is undoubtedly onerous, and the State will certainly recognize this service. We trust the secretaries will bear these points in mind, and endeavor to give us fuller reports, that we may all derive the full benefit which this Board is intended to give.

Mr. Denise. I believe one of the delegates here this morning reported 130 bushels of corn to the acre.

The Chair.-140 bushels, I believe, was reported by one of them. Mr. Denise. This so far exceeds Monmouth county that we have nothing to say. It goes way ahead of us.

Mr. Garrison, Cumberland county.-I wish the Chair had not added anything to my report as given this morning.

in

The Chair-I had no allusion to Cumberland county. I had allusion to the report read by the gentleman from Burlington county, which he said that Mr. Lippincott had raised 120 bushels of corn to the acre; and then there was another much larger-I think 130 bushels to the acre.

Mr. Budd.-I mentioned one case of 120 bushels to the acre. Mr. Wills, of Burlington county, is here. I call upon him for this infor

mation.

Mr. Denise. I do not dispute the statements made by any of the gentlemen.

Mr. Wills. We took thirty-six hills of corn and husked them, and carried the corn out and weighed it, and it gave a crop of 132 bushels to the acre.

A Member.-How was it weighed ?

Mr. Wells. We weighed it on the cob.

Mr. Denise. I do not think this is hardly a fair test of the whole field. Taking a few hills and testing them is not a fair average, or a fair test for the whole of the field.

I think when the gentlemen come here with their reports, they ought to give us the result of the whole field, and not the result of a few hills. That is not a fair test. This does not give us how much corn grows on an acre. It gives the result of a few hills, and that is all.

Mr. Thomson.-I would like to have a fair report, too.

Mr. Forsythe.-It has been my misfortune to be a farmer all my life, and I think I know something about it. Corn four and a half feet apart makes just sixty stacks to the acre; at four feet apart, seventy-five stacks to the acre. I have seen good crops of corn, but it takes good corn to turn out more than one bushel of corn to the stack.

At that rate we would have sixty or seventy-five bushels to the acre, according to the width of planting. I have heard people talk before, about their immense yields of corn. 130 bushels of corn to the acre would be two bushels of corn to the stack, and when you get it down as fine as that you get an enormous yield. Take the whole field, and I think you will find it is something less.

When you weigh corn right out of the field, with water and dirt and all on it, that is not corn. You can weigh corn full of water and get weight, but you don't get bushels. [Applause.]

Weigh some corn right out of the field in the Fall, and weigh it again next May, and I guess you will find you are losing considerable in weight. 150 pounds of corn weighed right out of the field will probably turn out some seventy-five or eighty pounds next May.

I think I have seen fields which yielded 90 or 100 bushels to the

acre; but when you tell me you go beyond that, there is something wrong there is no fair test of the crop made.

The corn which I referred to as yielding 90 or 100 bushels to the acre was the biggest corn I ever did see. It is not often beaten, I can tell you. When you get a yield of one bushel of corn from a stack, I tell you you are getting a good yield of corn, and when you take fifty or sixty acres of corn, it must be very good, indeed, if it averages sixty bushels to the acre. You can raise bigger crops by calculation, but not by measuring or weighing.

A Member.-May I ask the gentleman how the corn was measured or weighed ?

Mr. Forsythe. I am well acquainted with the gentleman who read the report. The corn was, by actual weight, of fifty-six pounds to the bushel of shelled corn. He told me that the ground was carefully measured by a competent surveyor, naming him to me, but I cannot now recollect the gentleman's name. I have not the slightest doubt. that the corn was carefully and fairly weighed and measured. I also know something about the land referred to, on which this corn grew.

The land referred to lies right along a river bottom, and the good, rich soil is perhaps eight to ten feet deep, of the very richest and best kind of mud, rich enough in itself without the addition of any manure or fertilizer, with the exception, perhaps, of a little lime occasionally, to keep it in good order, and loose. He applied 125 bushels of lime to the acre, and he raised 1,004 bushels of shelled corn. Without further manuring he sowed this ground to wheat and produced thirtythree and one-half bushels of wheat to the acre. I do not think there is the slightest reason to doubt this.

A Member.-How was the corn planted?

Mr. Forsythe. I do not know at all how it was planted.

The Chair.-Was the wheat sown immediately after the corn? Mr. Forsythe.-Yes, sir; it was sown immediately after the corn; that is the custom with us in Cumberland county.

Mr. Denise. I don't want the gentlemen to think that I doubt their words. I only ask whether they know how much the crop was which was grown on the whole piece of ground. Did these gentlemen shell their corn and weigh it? If they did this, we are satisfied. Of course, if they did this from the whole field, we then know just what the crop was, and just what we are talking about. This is the only fair test in a thing of this kind.

The Chair. I think the question a very pertinent and a very important one, and one which should be discussed fully by this Board.

The inference follows that if such a large crop of grain, or corn, can be produced from one acre of ground, or from one field, by one farmer, that it can be done on other ground by another farmer, using the same methods, and under the same circumstances. Let us have this fairly discussed before we leave it.

Judge Holcombe.-I don't want to do all the talking. I wish merely to say a few words about a big crop that I know something about.

Perhaps some of you remember seeing in the papers this year about a big crop of corn raised by one of our neighbors over here, a Bucks county farmer. I know something about that crop, and I know how it was raised, and propose to tell you about it.

Two members of the Farmers' Club over there thought they could beat each other in raising corn. The big crop referred to in the papers was raised by one of these gentlemen. He did it in this way:

He had three acres of land of most excellent quality near his barn. Now, mind you, I want you to remember the manure he put on it. He plowed up this ground and put twenty-seven loads of hog manure on it, and planted it in corn. Then he sowed it to rye and fed the rye to his cows. In the Spring he plowed the rye under and put twenty-seven loads more of hog manure on it. After his corn was taken off he sowed it to rye again, allowing his cows to feed it off.

In the Spring he plowed it up again and put on twenty-seven loads more of hog manure. He then planted it to corn, in rows three and a half feet apart, and raised 152 bushels of corn (shelled) to the acre. This is the way the big crop was raised. [Laughter.]

Mr. Pierson, the greatest corn grower in Bucks county, fairly covers his ground with manure. Why, you can drive right out in his field, after he is done putting on manure, and can unhitch your horses and put on a heaping load of manure right around the wagon, without ever moving it a step. This is the way he manures his ground.

Another man, when he heard how this big crop was raised, said he would try it, too. They talked this over between them, and each thought he could beat the other. They did not bet on it [Laughter] but one says to the other, "If you beat me I will give you a horse," and the other says, "Well, and if you beat me I will give you a horse." They did not bet, but that was the way they fixed it. [Loud laughter.]

Mr. Pierson got his land in splendid order, and had everything ready, and came to me and said he was all ready now, except one thing he did not know how he could retain the moisture in the ground.

I recommended him to use plenty of plaster for the moisture, and the result was very satisfactory.

Mr. Forsythe.-Mr. President, we have certainly heard some most wonderful stories here this afternoon and evening. I think none of these stories are more wonderful than those we have heard about New Orleans and the New Orleans Exposition.

These stories of the big crops of corn remind me of a field of corn I once saw which had been fertilized with such an enormous amount of manure. It certainly looked like a most beautiful crop; and so it was-it was the finest crop of stalks I ever saw. In this field the manure was put on as thick as he could plow it in. I saw one ear of corn in that field. Some people even said they saw three, but I never saw but one. [Laughter.] We have certainly heard some wonderful things here to-day, and one of them is about the plowing in Spain, which our President has told us about, with one jackass and one woman hitched to the plow. [Laughter.] Now, this is nothing new to me; I have often seen a woman and a jackass hitched together in this country. This is nothing uncommon here. We often see the same thing here; it is quite common.

Mr. Thompson.—Mr. President, the Legislative Committee, which was appointed at the last meeting of the Board, last year, to attend to the milk interests, has not yet reported that I have heard. Let us hear just what has been done. We would like to know all about it.

Mr. Taylor.-Mr. President, probably the gentleman on my left did not hear the report of the Executive Committee read this morning. The report he asks for was included in that, and has been explained here since.

The Committee on Legislation, which was to have been appointed, was neglected, and the matter of the milk law was left in the hands of the Executive Committee for attention.

We took charge of the work of this committee and had some three different bills referred to us, I think.

One of these bills was for the re-organization of the State Board of Agriculture, and one was this milk law.

We were requested to present an amendment of the milk law bill to