140 TRANSACTIONS OF THE. 



place, and wislied to show them, especially, a field of blacMierries whicli, 

 because of his endeavors to extend the cultivation, lias been kindly called 

 the Lawton, by this club. And that at ihe next meeting of it, he would 

 bring some of them for the members to try. 



. The Secretary exhibited the seed pods of the beautiful Macrophylla 

 (lon2: leaf) Paulownia-Imperialis, (so named after a daughter of the f]mpe- 

 ror Nicholas, of Russia.) The pods are full of downy fibre with seeds 

 hardly as large as mustard seed. 



He presented also a pod of the white Lupin, with its bean nearly fully 

 grown. He said that this plant had been greatly used anciently for plow- 

 ing in as a fertilizer ; that it possessed the power of growing in the poorest 

 soil, where hardly any other plant could — soil impossible for clover, buck- 

 wheat, or any of the so styled green manures. Lupin is a stout fleshy 

 plant, can grow close, atid one can have wheat upon the field where it is 

 plowed in the first year. I urged it before the club a dozen years ago for 

 tYial. No one has ever tried it yet. Portugal could scarcely raise her 

 bread without first fertilizing her poor lands with Lupins. Nature, you 

 all know, first grows some moss or some small plant fit for notbing but to 

 make a soil out of. We should always mend our land by using the most 

 quick and suitable growths for burying in the soil. I have no doubt that 

 those very plants which we see alone living on poor land, are those we 

 ought to sow the seeds of on it and bury the grown plants with the plow. 



Dr. Edgar F. Peck, of Brooklyn, presented stalks of timothy grass pulled 

 on the side of tlie railroad of Long Island, on the barrens, (so called) forty- 

 three miles from here. It seemed to have grown from some seed fallen 

 from a load of hay passing by. This stalk measured five and a half feet in 

 length. Not far from this, on a regular sown field, the timothy gave at 

 two mowings, two and a half tons an acre for five successive years, after 

 having been manured with barn yard manure five years before — twenty 

 loads an acre — has had no top dressing or anything else. The hay crop 

 was worth this year $17.50 per acre. 



The regular subjects : '" Mud and peat of salt and fresh water as manure," 

 and " Fruit on farms." 



Mr. Fuller spoke of the club foot in cabbage, his application of salt and 

 lime in vain. 



r-Tr. Meigs remarked tbat the doctors of th-e club fail in some eases as 

 well as other doctors do. 



Mr. Field never had the club foot on his place. 



Mr. Fuller. — The mud and peat of our salt and fresh water, are worth 

 more than the gold of California. The salt mud and peat was applied on 

 a naked knoll of pebbles, on Long Island sound, and it formed a soil which 

 bears fine trees. The mud is full of sliell and small animals, enriching it. 



T. W. Field. — I have examined the salt mud and found it almost half 

 full of small shells, worms, &c,, rendering it very rich in the elements of 

 manure* 



