490 AGRICULTURAL REPORT. 
particularly beneficial effect. This is shown by the fact that on all our 
virgin soils, recently burnt over, we get the fairest fruits, the finest vege- 
tables, and the best grain. This was illustrated at the exhibition of the 
American Pomological Society at Philadelphia, where the fruits from 
the new State of Kansas attracted universal admiration. He thought 
that salt, as a manure, should be used with great caution, and that it 
had no beneficial effect on land near the ocean, where there is naturally 
an atmosphere saturated with salt. 
Mr. Thompson, of Nantucket, stated that on land so poor it would not 
spindle corn, he had applied coal ashes, two or three inches deep, 
mixed with a little yellow loam, then plowed and harrowed, and in three 
years the soil was so much renovated that he cut a ton and a half to 
the acre of the best clover.: In another five-acre field, where he had 
applied leached ashes liberally, not much advantage was noted the first 
year, but the next year the benefit was very perceptible, which increased 
annually five or six years, when the meadow was plowed up. In a part 
of the field barn-yard manure was used, which ceased to show much 
effect the third year, while the ashes were effective for many years. A 
compost of three parts of muck to one of coal ashes was used in alter- 
nate strips on another field, by way of experiment, and sown with 
clover, rolled, but not harrowed. Wherever the compost was spread 
the clover germinated and developed handsomely, while the strips with- 
out the compost were barren. Mr. Thompson found it an object to pay 
25 cents a load of 16 bushels for all that were delivered at his farm. 
The alkaline matter of the ashes neutralizes the acid in peat. On Long 
Island the farmers send vessels to the State of Maine to bring ashes by 
the cargo to enrich the famous vegetable gardens that supply the mar- 
kets of New York. On the light, sandy lands of Nantucket coal ashes 
harden the soil, and bring in white clover. 
Mr. Hyde, president of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society, 
thought no one could go wrong in the use of wood ashes; he had used 
them with the most gratifying results, particularly on strawberries. 
He used peat ashes, chiefly as an absorbent, with the liquid contents of 
privies and with muck, with great satisfaction. He had not found coal 
ashes of much benefit on either wet or dry meadows, except in its 
mechanical operation on soils; as an absorbent it was no better than 
sand. He agreed with Colonel Wilder that salt is of no use on soils 
near the ocean, even in the culture of asparagus, a marine plant. Mr. 
Goodman, of Berkshire County, considered salt beneficial on lands in 
the interior beyond the influence of the sea air. Mr. Beebe, also of 
Berkshire, uses from one to three bushels of salt to the acre on oats, 
potatoes, and wheat, and on grass lands as a top-dressing, sown on the 
sod with the grain, harrowing in the whole together, and then sows the 
grass seed on top without stirring the soil. When used on Jand sown 
with oats it stiffens the straw, increases the weight, and his oats were 
Six inches higher than the crop standing side by side, with the same 
cultivation except the application of salt. He said one of the best 
manures for sandy land is a compost of one bushel of salt and three 
bushels of marl, which should lie four months under cover; then add 
five bushels of this compost to a cord of muck. (Professor Mapes’s 
famous recipe.) He tried it fifteen years ago cn land that still produces 
double the quantity of grass that is yielded on adjoining lands not thus 
manured. He thinks it, also, a great preventive of the rot in potatoes. 
While speaking of salt, he remarked that great care is requisite in 
feeding it te animals; he thought that nine-tenths of the animals reported 
