70 Parkes on the Use 



as a manure for their lands." He adds, " They let out the 

 water of these springs for a certain time upon the lands, after 

 there has been rain, and by this means the quantity of salt they 

 contain is so blended with the rain water, that it is too weak to 

 hurt the corn or grass, and yet strong enough to kill worms and 

 other vermin, and to improve vegetation." 



The FouiiTii property which I have assigned to common salt, 

 when employed in horticulture, is that of destroying weeds and 

 other noxious vegetables. On this part of the subject the evi- 

 dence is not so abundant as I could have wished ; the following 

 testimonies however do, I think, deserve attention. 



The author of an essay on the effect of salt on vegetation, 

 published in the first volume of the Practical Husbandman y 

 before quoted, expresses himself thus : " I am well assured 

 from a Scotch gentleman, that they have long used salt in that 

 part of Great Britain, always sowing ten or twelve bushels by 

 hand of their coarse salt, on an acre of young green wheat, some 

 time in November, December, January or February ; it being, 

 from the several accounts which I have had of it, very effectual 

 in the killing of tender weeds amongst corn, yet at the same 

 time cherishing the corn, and adds rnuch to the goodness and 

 plumpness of the grain." Page 48. 



Bishop Watson, in his Chemical Essays, says, that " in 

 Cheshire, wherever the soil abounds with rushes and weeds 

 it is customary to lay a quantity of rock-salt upon it to destroy 

 them." Vol. ii. p. 73. 



Gervase Markham, the well-known writer on rural affairs in 

 the middle of the seventeenth century, strongly recommends 

 the use of salt as a manure for land, in his book entitled " A 

 Farewell to Husbandry,'* and concludes his observations by re- 

 marking, that " there is nothing which killeth weeds and other 

 offences of the ground so much as saltness." 



Major John Taubman, speaker of the House of Keys in the 

 Isle of Man, in giving his evidence before the Board of Trade, 

 in the year 1817, states, that " he has used refuse salt as a 

 manure on meadows, with advantage ; it was sown thinly by 

 hand, — caimot speak to the quantity used; the meadow had 



