it much sooner. The same with wheat; he expected the end
would come in a few years, but they had now gone on between 30 and 40
years. When the end came they would not be sorry, because then they
would have the knowledge they were seeking for."

Dr. Voelcker, at the same meeting remarked: "Many soils contained from
1-1/2 to 2 per cent of available potash, and a still larger quantity
locked up, in the shape of minerals, which only gradually came into
play; but the quantity of potash carried off in crops did not exceed
2 cwt. per acre, if so much. Now 0.1 per cent of any constituent,
calculated on a depth of six inches, was equivalent to one ton per acre.
Therefore, if a soil contained only 0.1 per cent of potash, a ton of
potash might be carried off from a depth of 6 inches. But you had not
only 0.1 per cent, but something like 1-1/2 per cent and upwards in many
soils. It is quite true there were many soils from which you could not
continuously take crops without restoring the potash."

"In all of which," said the Doctor, "there is nothing new. It does not
help us to determine whether potash is or is not deficient in our soil."

"That," said I, "can be ascertained only by actual experiment. Put a
little hen-manure on a row of corn, and on another row a little
hen-manure and ashes, and on another row, ashes alone, and leave one row
without anything. On my farm I am satisfied that we need not buy
potash-salts for manure. I do not say they would do no good, for they
may do good on land not deficient in available potash, just as lime will
do good on land containing large quantities of lime. But potash is not
what my land needs to make it produce maximum crops. It needs available
nitrogen, and possibly soluble phosphoric acid."

The system of farming adopted in this section, is much more likely to
impoverish the soil of nitrogen and phosphoric acid than of potash.

If a soil is deficient in potash, the crop which will first indicate the
deficiency, will probably be clover, or beans. Farmers who can grow
large crops of red-clover, need not buy potash for manure.

On farms where grain is largely raised and sold, and where the straw,
and corn-stalks, and hay, and the hay from clover-seed are retained on
the farm, and this strawy manure returned to the land, the soil will
become poor from the lack of nitrogen and phosphoric acid long before
there would be any need of an artificial supply of potash.

On the other hand, if far