“Perhaps it is not so strange,” replied Mr. West.  “I fear that some of their ancestors did the same thing in Virginia and other Eastern States until the land became poor, and then of course they were ‘land poor.’  But, say, that ‘stone soup’ wouldn’t be so bad for those Ohio landowners, would it?  I should think they would avail themselves of the positive information from their experiment station.  Speaking of soup, I wonder if it isn’t time for lunch!  But tell me; are the Illinois farmers doing anything with raw phosphate?”

“Yes, they are doing something, but by no means as much as they ought.  About two months ago a group of the leading farmers from our section of the State went up to Urbana to look over the experiment fields, some of which have been carried on since 1870.  The land is the typical corn belt prairie, and consequently the results should be of very wide application.  Well, as a result of that day’s inspection of the actual field results, an even twelve carloads of raw phosphate were ordered by those farmers upon their return home; and I learned of another community where ten carloads were ordered at once after a similar visit.  As an average of the last three years the yield of corn on those old fields has been 23 bushels per acre where corn has been grown every year without fertilizing, 58 bushels where a three-year rotation of corn, oats and clover is followed, and in the same rotation where organic matter, limestone, and phosphorus have been applied the average yield has been 87 bushels in grain farming and 92 bushels in live-stock farming.

“I attended the State Farmers’ Institute last February, and there I met many men who have had several years’ experience with the raw rock.  Usually they put on one ton per acre as an initial application and plow it under with a good growth of clover; and, afterward, about one thousand pounds per acre every four years will be ample to gradually increase the absolute total supply of phosphorus in the soil, even though large crops are removed.

“A good many of our thinking farmers are now using one or two cars of raw phosphate every year, and they are figuring hard to keep up the organic matter and nitrogen.  The most encouraging thing is the very marked benefit of the phosphate to the clover crop, and of course more clover means more corn in grain farming, and more corn and clover means more manure in live-stock farming.

“On the Illinois fields advantage is taken of these relations in the developing of systems of permanent agriculture.  You see, if the phosphate produces more clover, then more clover can be plowed under on that land; or, if the crops are fed, then more manure can be returned to the phosphated land than to the land not treated with phosphate and not producing so large crops.  Really the phosphate is not given full credit for what it has accomplished in the Ohio experiments; because, while the land receiving phosphated manure has produced about one-fourth larger crops than the land receiving the untreated manure, the actual amounts of manure applied have been the same, whereas one-fourth more manure can be produced from the phosphated land and if this increased supply of manure were returned to the land it would increase the supply of nitrogen and thus make still larger crop yields possible.”