ticle of such positive, certain benefit to his
hungry soil.

ED. REYNOLDS ESQ., OF BALTIMORE, ON THE VALUE OF GUANO.

Writing on the subject of "bought manures," as everything is termed not
produced upon the farm, and how dubiously they are looked upon by some
persons calling themselves good farmers, for fear of being humbugged,
Mr. Reynolds says, in a letter dated July, 1850, "Since 1843, I have
been trying to find out which is the best of all these 'new things,' and
have now, after having been very considerably humbugged, settled down
upon bones and guano--although, even the last named in a very dry year,
has also 'cheated me'; but this is by no means its character, as I am
constrained to admit, that after having tried it on all sorts of soil,
and perhaps as long if not longer than any other person in the State, it
is my opinion that when properly applied, with an average fair season,
it is a very powerful fertilizer. My mode of using it is, when applied
to tobacco, to mix one and a half bushels of the Peruvian, (which is
ordinarily 100 lbs.) with one bushel rich earth, and one bushel of
plaster, which admits about the fifth part of a gill of the mixture to
each hill for every 5,000 hills--and putting it in the center of the
check before being scraped--so that when the hill is made, it lies
beneath the plant. On wheat, I apply three bushels of Peruvian guano
equal to 200 lbs. mixed with one bushel of plaster, one bushel rich
earth to the acre, sowing on the surface and plowing it in as soon and
as deep as possible, after it is sowed. The past spring I have put 300
lbs. to the acre, on 30 acres of corn, being half of a field, on a farm
in Calvert, mixing with it the same quantity of rich earth and plaster,
and sowing on the surface, plowing in at once very deep, using the
cultivator only in working it afterwards. I do not intend to use it at
all with corn, hereafter, but not because I do not think it also a good
fertilizer with this crop, (as my corn on my Calvert farm, upon which it
has been used, now shows very fair,) but only because it has never
failed to pay me three fold better on wheat, than on anything else. In
order to test its virtue, it is essentially necessary to plow it in
deeply, and stir it as little as possible afterwards."

_Bones._--Of these I have used both ground and crushed, and always to
advantage at ten to twelve bushels per acre; bought from manufacturers
here, and agents of houses in New Yo