PROCEEDINGS OF THE FARMERS* CLUB. 91 



Club-foot Cabbage — Remedy. 



Mr. David H. Holdeu, Poughkeepsie, N, Y., gives the following 

 remedy for club-foot cabbage, from a successful grower: " Un- 

 leached ashes, used plentifully on the seed-bed, and a handful in 

 the hill, is a sure remed3^ The party giving the information says 

 he has raised cabbage twenty years on the same ground, and never 

 has any chib-footed." 



Mr. Solon Robinson. — We presume there are plenty of other 

 persons who have raised cabbage upon the same ground twice that 

 length of time who never used ashes, and who never had any club- 

 footed cabbage. Therefore, "who knows" whether ashes are a 

 remedy or not ? It is pretty certain that in some soils or situa- 

 tions the disease is not known, or, if known, is not troublesome. 



Adjourned. 



May 1, 1866. 

 Prof. S. D. Tillman, in the chair ; John W. Chambers, Secretary. 



Bituminous Slate. 

 Mr. Solon Robinson exhibited specimens of a new kind of fuel 

 from Latayette county, Wis. It hi?s the appearance of ordinary 

 clay slate, but burns with greater readiness than bituminous coal, 

 emitting a black smoke and a kerosene odor. Mr. Robinson said 

 the sand rock in many parts of the oil region will burn in the 

 same way. 



Wood Coated with Coal Tar for Drains. 



Mr. J. K. Parrot, Cincinnati, Ohio, says that he is about to put 

 down a drain of three-inch boards nailed together in a V shape, 

 and, for preservation, designed to coat them with coal tar, and 

 then sink them to the depth of three and a half feet below the 

 surface of the ground. He wishes to ask the club if the gaseous 

 evaporation of the coal tar rising up through the ground will 

 injure vegetation above ? His attention had been called to the 

 poisonous nature of this gas by the fact that upon the recent laying 

 of gas pipes in his town, the little leakage that at first occurred at 

 the joints instantly killed the shade trees whose roots came in con- 

 tact with it. 



Mr. S. Edward Todd said that at the depth of three and a half 



