MANURES FOR THE QUINCE. 



wood yield, a bushel of ashes. In one hundred pounds 

 of such ashes there are about sixteen pounds of potash, 

 which is needful to good fruit. There are next three 

 and a half pounds of soda, five and a quarter pounds of 

 phosphoric acid, and sixty-seven pounds of lime and 

 magnesia. A mixture of one part ashes with three parts 

 of chip dirt is an excellent top dressing for the orchard. 

 When the needed potash can not be had in wood ashes, 

 a substitute may be made of the muriate or the sulphate 

 of potash. Nitrate of soda and muriate of potash im- 

 prove the quality of acid fruits. Lime is valuable in 

 most soils by its solvent effects on the silica they con- 

 tain. If lime be found in the ashes of a plant, it will be 

 valuable as a fertilizer of that plant ; and such is the 

 case with all hard wood trees like the quince. It also 

 improves the fruit. 



Salt is so valuable to the quince, that it must be con- 

 sidered indispensable to its highest success. I no longer 

 think of raising quinces without salting every spring 

 before the trees begin to grow. I have learned not only 

 to salt my quince trees, but my pear trees as well. It 

 does them good not only in promoting a healthy growth, 

 but I think acts as a preventive of the blight, to which 

 both are subject. It may do this by its chlorine or by 

 its soda, or by both combined, through the spongioles of 

 the roots effecting a change in the sap and the wood. 

 We know not how, but have found the effect favorable. 

 Besides these effects it also promotes fruitfulness. I sowed 

 about three quarts (the quantity for a tree large enough 

 to bear a bushel) around a barren tree early one spring, 

 and the year after it bore well, and so continued from 

 year to year. Quince trees along the sea-coast may be 

 expected to do well. Trees at Newport, Rhode Island, 

 that were set for screens in exposed places, yielded ex- 

 cellent crops of very fine quinces. Salt acts as a solvent 

 of other materials of fertility locked up in the soil. In 



