Poudrette.—"I have used also, to good advantage, particularly on clayey lands, at the rate of six to eight barrels per acre. It is a first rate top dressing on young clover in spring, at two to three barrels per acre; this article has been prepared so badly heretofore, that a great quantity of it was really worthless."
We also concede to poudrette as much credit as Mr. Reynolds but as will be seen, it will cost more to improve land with it than with guano.
Prepared Guano—Agricultural Salts—Generators and Regenerators.—Of these, the testimony of Mr. Reynolds is exactly to the point, concise and strong, and exactly in accordance with all the facts we have been able to collect upon the same subject. He says, "I have tried them on corn, wheat, oats, clover and tobacco; but have yet to discover that they ever generated anything for me, though I have heard them sometimes well spoken of."
Want of room in this pamphlet alone prevents us from inserting the names and operations of many other gentlemen in this rapidly improving State—a State now undergoing the process of renovation by the use of guano, to a greater extent, perhaps, than any other in the Union.
GUANO IN DELAWARE.
Hon. John M. Clayton's Farm.—No one who looks upon this highly improved farm now, with its most luxuriant crops, can be made to believe it was a barren waste seven years ago—hardly worth fencing or cultivating. This great change, so far beyond the power of human belief, has been effected by lime, plaster and guano. The railroad from Frenchtown to New Castle, passes through this farm, four miles from the latter place. It is well worthy a visit from any one anxious to make personal observations of the effects of "bought manures," upon a soil too poor to support a goose per acre.
Effect of Guano on Oats.—During a visit to Mr. Clayton, in 1851, we saw the most luxuriant growth of oats upon one of the fields of this farm, which we have ever witnessed, and it has been our fortune to see some tall specimens of this crop on the bottom lands of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. The seed he had obtained from England, and the means of making it grow, from Peru. The guano was plowed in with the oats, at the rate of 350 lbs. to the acre. The soil is a yellow clayey loam. The effect upon other crops had been equally beneficial. The growth of clover was so great he had purchased thirty bullocks to fatten, for the purpose of trying to consume some of his surplus feed. The effect upon wheat, corn, potatoes, turnips, garden vegetables and fruit trees, was almost as astonishing as upon the oats and grass.
C. P. Holcomb, Esq., one of the most improving farmers of one of the most improving counties in the U.S., has met with great success in the use of lime, plaster, and guano. His beautiful highly improved home farm is near Newcastle; but that upon which he has met with great success in the use of guano, lies about four miles from Dover. Before he purchased it had become celebrated for its miserable poverty. It is now equally celebrated for its productiveness. The use of guano in that part of the State has now reached a point far beyond what the most sanguine would have dared to predict four years ago; and the benefits are of the most flattering kind. Lands have been increased in value to a far greater extent than all the money paid for guano; while the increased profit from the annual crops, has produced corresponding improvements in the condition and happiness of the people.
No greater blessing, said an intelligent gentleman to me, ever was bestowed upon the people of Delaware.