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