356 THE FARMER AT HOME. 



difference of weight will appear from the following account of samples 

 of salt, manufactured at the Onondaga works, in New York. These 

 samples were of four different kinds. The coarsest is of the most 

 perfect whiteness and purity, and weighs seventy-four pounds to the 

 bushel. It is made by evaporating the salt water in the sun, in large 

 wooden vats. It is almost as coarse as Turk's Island salt. The 

 second quality is about as coarse as St. Ubes' salt, but entirely free 

 from all impurity. It weighs sixty-six pounds to the bushel, and is 

 made by boiling the brine in wrought iron pans. The third quality 

 is a little finer than that called Liverpool coarse salt, and a bushel 

 weighs fifty-five pounds. (The Liverpool weighs only fifty pounds to 

 the bushel.) The fourth kind is very fine and clean table salt, of the 

 very best quality. The water of the salt springs at Salina, is said to 

 yield four times as much salt as the water of the ocean. It proba,bly 

 proceeds from some vast body of rock salt in the bowels of the earth. 

 In a memoir on the Salines, or salt springs, and wells of the Kenhaway 

 county, in Virginia, it is stated among other particulars, that at the 

 salt works, along the great Kenhaway, there are about sixty furnaces 

 in operation, producing from ten to twenty thousand bushels annu- 

 ally ; and furnishing the principal supply of this essential article to 

 the States of Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, the west part of Ten- 

 nessee, the northern section of Alabama, and the western counties of 

 Virginia. 



The quantity of salt used is immense. In all culinary processes 

 it is indispensable. It is as conducive to health as it is- agreeable to 

 the taste. One could scarcely live without it. Nor is it less neces- 

 sary to other animals than to man. There should be a strict regard 

 to its being given to oxen arid cows, sheep and horses, without any 

 long intervals. They will thrive the better for it. And it is equally 

 valuable for hogs, especially upon being fattened. Salt is also used in 

 agriculture, particularly in forming composts. However, if used with- 

 out regard to its chemical qualities, the effects of it may sometimes be 

 baneful rather than beneficial ; for it is known to all that to certain 

 kinds of vegetable life it is very destructive. If applied to an aspara- 

 gus bed, while it destroys grass and certain weeds whose roots are 

 near the surface, the growth of the asparagus is promoted. In gene- 

 ral its effects are said to be better on good soils than poor ones. If 

 cast about trees, the saline properties may indeed destroy insects ; 

 but, if the quantity has been too large, so as to penetrate to the mass 

 of the roots, the trees have likewise now and then been destroyed. 

 Those who use salt in agriculture should be furnished with a directory 

 for it, either Brown's American Muck Book, or Dana's Muck Manual. 



SALMON. A celebrated fish belonging to the trout genus, which 

 inhabits the northern seas, and ascends the rivers in spring for the 

 purpose of depositing its spawn. The excellence of its flesh is well 

 known, but it vari3s somewhat in different waters. In certain dis- 



