60 Parkes on the Use 



article which may be had for httle or nothing, and which, if 

 divested of the sulphate and muriate of manganese, which is 

 always contained in it, would doubtless prove a very powerful 

 and beneficial manure. 



A gardener of considerable celebrity at Chorley in Lancashire, 

 of the name of Beck, made use of common salt in his exten- 

 sive gardens for upwards of thirty years, especially upon his 

 ONIONS, and he found that the application of this salt very far 

 surpassed that of all other manures. He never took any care 

 to ascertain the exact quantity of salt which he employed ; 

 but when he was questioned as to this point, he said, that he 

 thought he was accustomed to use it in the proportion of about 

 sixteen bushels to an acre of land. His practice was to sow the 

 salt immediately after he had covered in the seed, a point which 

 should always be attended to, because it has been found, that, 

 if the salt be sown after the plants show themselves above 

 oTOund, the whole crop will inevitably be destroyed. On the 

 contrary, if a moderate quantity of salt be sown upon the land 

 as soon as the onion seed is deposited in the ground, say 

 about six pounds to one square perch of land, or four ounces 

 to a square yard, the result will not fail to be striking and ad- 

 vantageous. 



The general failure of the onions last year has been much 

 spoken of, but I do not hear of a single gardener that employed 

 salt who had not a very abundant crop. As a corroboration of 

 this, I may refer to the letter of Mr. William Morton of Biel, 

 which was read to our Society on the 8th of September last, and 

 which states the benefits he had derived from the use of brine, 

 made by the solution of common salt in water, and which he 

 had applied to his beds of onions, shallots, and other roots. 

 I shall, however, have occasion, before I conclude this address, 

 again to refer to Mr. Morton's letter. 



Seeing that common salt produces such striking effects in the 

 culture of potatoes, turnips, carrots, onions, shallots, ^c, I 

 cannot help being surprised that it has not been brought into 

 general use long since, especially as I observe, that more than 

 200 years ago, the Lord Chancellor Bacon, in the most unequi- 



