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176

PLASTERING MAIZE AND POTATOES

and other circumstances, will affect its value as a nutritive fodder, and will, in different districts, modify the way in which it can be most usefully or most profitably employed.

Much has been said at different times about the introduction of Indian corn as a field-culture into England-an object which, I fear, our feeble summer heats, cloudy days, and early frosts, will prevent us f from ever extensively attaining; but as a green food to be cut in its unripe state, and given green or dried for winter, it might be introduced with a chance of profitable

success.

Plaster or gypsum is extensively used in this neighbourhood, being almost the only manuring which a large portion of the land receives. It is obtained abundantly among the beds of the Onondaga salt-group, and is applied in the unburned state. It is crushed in mills, where it is sold in the state of powder at 3d. a bushel, or a dollar and a half a ton of 25 bushels.

The maize is plastered either once broadcast, at the rate of 3 bushels an acre, or twice with the hand, upon each hill after each hoeing, at the rate of 1 bushel an acre. I saw four rows in the fine field of Indian corn I walked through which had not been plastered, while all the rest had—once only at the rate of a bushel an acre; and the difference in favour of the plastered part was very striking to the eye. Oats are also much benefited by plaster, especially in a dry season like this; and it brings away clover, and makes it very tall. It is likewise believed to improve the potatoes which are planted without manure. I caused a number of plants of the potatoes to which gypsum had and had not been applied to be dug up, and certainly the number and size of the potatoes found at the roots, as well as the height of the stems, were greatly in favour of the plastered part. It was applied before hoeing, and then

MOST BENEFICIAL IN DRY SEASONS.

177

drawn up around them. It is usual to put it in with the sets; but it was put around the young plants this year, "only because," said Mr Geddes, "the drought was such that I saw if something was not done I should have no crop at all." An English farmer would hardly believe he had done anything towards saving a crop of potatoes if he had only sprinkled a bushel of gypsum over an acre of the land in which his potatoes were growing.

This beneficial action of gypsum, notwithstanding all that has been written upon the subject, is still very wonderful, and not the less so that in so many places, and in so many circumstances, it fails to produce any sensible effect. Mr Ruffin, states that in the Carolinas it is found to produce the best effects upon land which has been already limed; and here, where its beneficial influence is so manifest, the land is naturally rich in lime. I have caused an analysis of a portion of the green shale from which the soil on Mr Geddes's farm is formed to be subsequently made, and have found it to contain as much as 23 per cent of carbonate of lime, and 13 per cent of carbonate of magnesia.* It may be, therefore, that while this marly and magnesian character of its soil certainly makes the district more favourable to the growth of wheat, that it has some influence also in disposing it to be beneficially acted upon by gypsum. This substance does not appear to require rain to aid its effects, since it is applied especially in *The composition of this slaty rock from Mr Geddes's farm at Fairmount, near Syracuse, was as follows:

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M

The presence of phosphoric acid in this sample was not appreciable.

VOL. I.

178

WAGES OF LABOURERS.

droughty seasons. A calcareous soil and a hot sun may possibly, therefore, be instrumental towards its success. This view is further supported by the prevalent opinion among farmers "that the great use of plaster is to draw water from the air;" which means, as I take it, that its action is more apparent in dry than in wet seasons. A very extreme view of its influence upon the weather was entertained by some of the old Dutch farmers in the United States-one of whom, according to Judge Peters, objected to the use of it because "it attracted thunder."

Mr Geddes works his farm with four pairs of horses and seven men, on an average, all the year through. His head-man has 313 dollars a-year. Other men have dollar (3s. English) a-day, except in harvest, when they have 1 to 1 dollars a-day. A good man, taken into the house, has 150 dollars (£31, 10s.) a-year and his board. They are hired by the month.

Behind Mr Geddes's farm, at a short distance towards the south, rises the escarpment of the Helderberg limestone, the outcrop of which, more or less distinct and elevated, runs east to the Hudson River, and west as far as Lake Erie, and forms the southern limit of the belt of low rich land of which this wheat-region consists. He drove me in an open carriage for some miles along this escarpment, and thus enabled me to obtain a general idea of the whole country, and gave me an opportunity of picturing to myself what this broad plain will ultimately become when arterial and thorough drainage have done their work, and the axe of the clearer has laid open the broad patches of wilderness which still stretch, with occasional wide breaks, on almost every side as far as the eye can reach.

The Onondaga salt-group, on which Mr Geddes's farm reposes, consists on the surface of green shales richly calcareous, sometimes impure shaly limestones, to

SOILS OF THE ONONDAGA SALT-GROUP.

179

which succeed similar shales containing deposits or rounded nests of gypsum. These rest on a porous limestone, beneath which again occur green and red shales, calcareous and crumbling like those above, and like them forming rich wheat-soils. It has an average thickness of about 1200 feet, and forms a belt of generally level and undulating land, running east from Syracuse nearly a hundred miles, and west as far as Buffalo, and again beyond the Niagara River, far into Upper Canada. The breadth of this belt at Syracuse is about ten or twelve miles, and it rapidly tapers off to nothing as we go east towards the Hudson River. But westward it first expands, in Seneca and Wayne counties, to a breadth of between twenty and thirty miles, and afterwards continues from sixteen to twenty miles wide for nearly one hundred miles, after which it contracts to about twelve miles, which is its width on the river Niagara. This formation alone, therefore, forms a large area of rich land. But the country to the north of it, as far as Lake Erie, is also underlaid by rocks which crumble readily, and yield soils of good quality, and generally rich in lime; while to the south the nature of the rocks, and the agency of those causes to which the spread of drift is owing, have both in part contributed to the production of good grain-growing land. Hence, in the so-called wheatdistrict of western New York, is included the broad belt of about forty miles in width-from the shores of Lake Ontario, southwards to and including a large portion of the Hamilton shales of the New York geologists. As this country presents a really interesting illustration of the influence of geological causes on agricultural capabilities, I subjoin a section across this wheat-district at its broadest part, where it includes the eastern portion of the county of Wayne, and a portion of the county of Seneca.

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Calcareous

clays.

Green and blue calcareous clays.

The whole of this flat country consists of rich wheat soils.

Rich calcareous clays,

with salt and gypsum.

Helderberg limestones.

Lodi.

180

SECTION OF WESTERN NEW YORK.

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