AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 2l7 



brealclng, circles around lights, ponds become thick and muddy, &c. &c. 

 I hope that our good people will follow up the observations. 



On the expansion and contraction of the air, physical and mechanical 

 action. When the air becomes heavy, as it is said, (in truth, light,) ani- 

 mals suffer, and vegetables are relaxed. To this circumstance we, in part, 

 attribute the low growth of plants on mountains ; and we add that to the 

 expansion and contraction of the air, its spring and its weight, are the 

 means employed by nature to determine the movement of the sap. 



BONES. 



There are many questions not yet settled, as to the proper management 

 of bones for manure. When fresh from the animal, whole or divided, their 

 natural decomposition is always, almost, too slow ; and enormous differences 

 are found by experience, in the time required to decompose them when 

 pulverized. 



USES OF SALT IN AGRICULTURE. 



Cadwallader Ford, of Boston Society for promoting agriculture in 1790, 

 observes that he left his farming to his sons, and they never used any salt 

 until 1785. That year on an acre of flax we sowed a bushel of salt, 

 after the plants had grown a finger's length. It had a good effect. My 

 neighbors for two miles around had no flax worth the trouble of pulling, 

 while I got nearly ten bushels of seed to my acre. I advise the trying it 

 on rye, oats, Indian corn, and at the rate of two bushels per acre. They 

 may depend on it that every bushel of salt will produce more than five 

 times the cost of the salt, and perhaps as much as ten times. 



[American Academy of Arts and Sciences.] 



Joseph Greenleaf, Esq., of Boston, says, (1790,) that in his part of the 

 country, the farmers say that whoever raises Indian corn, pays more for 

 the labor than the corn is worth. To convince them of their error, I 

 bought a piece of land from one of them which he affirmed was worn out 

 and would not produce a crop of any thing. The land was dry, not a stone 

 in it, very light, shallow, inclining to sand, overrun with briars, weeds, St. 

 John's wort, and here and there a spire of coarse wild grass. 



I got a plow made with a sharp coulter, a share of about one-fourth the 

 size and weight of the common plows, with a furrow board on a new con- 

 struction ; it followed the coulter edgewise, turning the furrow over in 

 rather a spiral form. With this plow, requiring but one horse, I plowed 

 the full length of the fieLl, and returning I turned up a furrow against the 

 first one. At four feet from this I turned up another similar double fur- 

 row ; so leaving four feet space between every double furrow tlirough the 

 whole field. On these double furrows I planted potatoes four feet apart 

 between each hill. The field contained two acres and an half, and was 

 about forty rods in length. It was plowed and planted in ona dnij, with 

 one horse and two boys. When the potatoes came up, the same boys Avith 

 the same plow and horse, turned another furrow of the unplowtd space, 



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