314 Mr. Johnson on Saline Manures, 



land would have little faith in the value of any manure which 

 came not from the farm-yard. A tenant of the heavy clays of 

 Sussex would be loth to consider clay a manure, though he ap- 

 plies sand whenever he can procure it ; a Suffolk landowner, 

 on the contrary, amid his wild drifting sands, would be as- 

 tounded if you told him that sand was a fertilizer. Again, a 

 Kentish yeoman will tell you that ** there is no good in chalk," 

 because his land abounds in it ; and when he sees ship-loads of 

 this manure leaving his chalky shores for Essex, he is apt to 

 think that on the other side of the Thames the farmers do 

 strange things. 



A manure, therefore, may be popularly defined to be any 

 substance added to a soil which increases its fertility. 



Many circumstances operate to modify the action of all ma- 

 nures. Soil, climate, seasons, and local situation (as having a 

 northerly or southerly aspect) have all a great and important 

 influence. To give an instance with regard to climate : the same 

 situation which is too retentive of moisture in the West of Eng- 

 land may be not sufficiently so in the East ; for in Essex and 

 Sufiblk the average depth of rain is not one-half that of Lanca- 

 shire or Cheshire. 



Sand, therefore, may be a manure to a clay soil in Cheshire, 

 or Westmoreland, and yet be injurious to the same land if 

 situated in Essex. 



We must not, therefore, when we are told of a mineral or 

 saline manure being advocated as an agricultural agent, decide 

 upon its merits, from even our local experience, with too much 

 readiness ; for there are few substances found near the earth's 

 surface which, when employed on some soil or other, will not 

 produce beneficial results. 



The most universal manure is that from decayed animal and 

 vegetable substances, which acts most probably so beneficially 

 upon vegetables, by gradually combining with oxygen gas, and 

 forming various gaseous matters which are known to be the 

 food of plants. Farm-yard dung, too, contains a great number 

 of saline substances, such as salts of ammonia, phosphate and 

 carbonate of lime, muriate of potash, and common salt ; and 

 that these salts form a very valuable portion of the manure is 

 proved by the fact well known among farmers, that a flooded 



