STATE REPORTS OF AGRICULTURE. 495 
momentit leaves the cow, andis easily affected by external influences; and 
if it comes in contact with the effluvia from gutters, or other noxious 
places, or even with meat hung in its vicinity, it will at once absorb the 
taint. This attention is important, as the same milk which is made into 
inferior cheese can as easily and at the same expense be made to yield 
a fine article, and with very different pecuniary results. 
It appears from Mr. Geddes’s essay on salt that, until within a few 
years, the use of Turk’s Island salt had always been required in salting 
pork for the army. But experiments made under the direction of the 
War Department dispelled the prejudice that required the use of this 
salt, and proved that the Onondaga salt, tested in hot climates and for 
long periods, is quite as good as that made anywhere to keep army or 
navy pork, and itis now used by the Government. It has also been 
extensively introduced into the great dairy districts in New York, and 
has given satisfaction after the severest tests. Even the prejudices of 
our eastern fishermen, who, for a century, have imported all their salt 
from the Mediterranean coasts of France, have given way, and salt from 
Onondaga is fast coming into use with them, with satisfactory results. 
The salt springs of Onondaga are now capable of supplying 10,000,000 
people with salt for every purpose; and in Michigan, the supply 
of water from their salt springs is practically unlimited, and that, 
too, where the salt can be rolled directly from the manufactories on 
board the vessels that navigate the great lakes. An immense bed of 
rock-salt has also been discovered in Louisiana, and it is so easily worked 
that the salt can be delivered in New Orleans at $4 a ton, which is a 
lower price than that of the coarse English salt on shipboard at Liver- 
pool. Relative to the expediency of using salt as a manure, experi- 
ments are mentioned with diverse and sometimes opposing results. 
This is doubtless owing to variations in the quantity used, the manner 
of using, and the difference in the compositions of the soils on which it 
has been tried. After weighing all the facts in the case, Mr. Geddes 
comes to these conclusions : 
Some soils have enough salt in them, and more added does injury. Such lands may 
be fonnd along the seacoast, and where salt springs appear. Other lands are greatly 
benefited by light dressings of salt. English farmers “scatter salt over their fields at 
the rate of two bushels per acre, with good success,” and this quantity may be enough. 
Some men have greatly puzzled themselves over the fact that light dressings are bene- 
ficial, while heavy ones do positive injury, and have finally said, as salt in small 
quantities is known to accelerate the puiretaction of animal substance, and when in 
larger, to retard it, and thus is useful in assisting the organs of digestion in men and 
other carnivorous animals, * ‘ e so it may aid in reducing vegetable mat- 
ter in the soil into food for plants, if applied in small quantities. 
Mr. Skinner sowed rather less than half a barrel of coarse salt on an 
old sod filled with grubs. The salt was soon dissolved by rain. The 
ground was harrowed and planted with corn, and half a pint of leached 
ashes was scattered on each hill. The yield of corn was very large, and 
not a hill was injured by worms. 
Mr. Solon Robinson thinks the best lime for farmers comes from oyster- 
shells, or marl, which is a product of small shells. Limestone clay lands 
are always productive, as the blue-grass regions of Kentucky and other 
Western States prove. Their alluvial portions produce wonderful crops 
of Indian corn, and at some future day, he is confident, will give a great 
yield of sugar beets, the culture of which will prove a staple industry 
of American farmers, as it isin France and Germany. Decomposed 
argillaceous rocks, particularly when micaceous, make good soil for 
grapes, as the mica affords potash, which grapes must have. It is also 
a prime necessity for growing wheat, as all good farmers know, and 
