112 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



for hauling ; but I would not advise you to buy oyster shells and 

 grind them, and then put them on your land. 



Then allow me say, as to the effect of coal ashes, that we 

 must take a good many things into account. One gentleman 

 says he tried coal ashes, and did not get any benefit. Now, if 

 you vise coal ashes from places where a large amount of wood or 

 charcoal is used for kindling, you see you get a pretty large per 

 cent., five or ten per cent., of wood ashes: two hundred pounds 

 in a ton. That would pay for hauling. There is four or five 

 per cent, of soluble matter in anthracite coal ashes, that is all ; 

 but spread upon moist land, meadow land, it will have about 

 the effect of sand. If you cart a load of coal ashes upon a moist 

 meadow, and cover that land with the ashes, I think it will 

 usually have a good effect; and so will a load of sand have a 

 good effect. It supplies silica, to some extent. I think we 

 should take these things into account. 



I do hope, gentlemen, that we shall not be misled about this 

 matter of experiment ; if we are, we shall be the greatest sufferers. 

 We want to keep in view certain principles in agriculture, and 

 do not let us be turned aside from them. I feel sometimes that 

 our agricultural papers make a mistake. In farming, there are 

 certain points that I think we must assume to be settled. And 

 when a thing is settled, we ought not to keep opening it up and 

 bringing it back again into the field of controversy. But this is 

 constantly done in farming. There is so much doubt excited by 

 these experiments, which, if they were explained, really would 

 amount to nothing, that we get a little confused. I do not 

 know how we shall ever remedy this to any very great extent, but 

 I think this meeting will remedy it to some extent. I think we 

 want to settle down upon sure principles in farming. There 

 are certain facts proved, and we must seize hold of them and 

 hold on to them, and add something more to them as we can ; 

 and in that way we shall bring agriculture to as near a scientific 

 basis as we can. That is the only way in which we can make 

 progress. If we settle a fact to-day, and some man who does 

 not know anything about it, upsets it to-morrow, we shall never 

 make any progress. We must, in the first place, understand 

 what plant- food is, and we do know what plant- food is. Then 

 we must know the conditions under which it is assimilated, 

 and we do know those conditions. Then we must not be mis- 



