252 HANDY-BOOK OF HUSBANDRY. 



leached are very much the most valuable, especially so far as their 

 amount of potash is concerned, as the leaching has for its object 

 only the removal of this ingredient. At the same time, the value 

 of hard-wood ashes for the production of potash is often too high 

 to allow of their use as a manure ; and the chief supply of farmers 

 within easy carriage of leaching establishments, is in the applica- 

 tion of leached ashes, which still contain a considerable amount 

 of potash that the imperfect leaching has not withdrawn from 

 them, owing to a low degree of solubility, but that is perfectly 

 available to the roots of plants. The value of leached ashes 

 (along the New England coast usually about 28 cents per bushel) 

 is fixed solely by an agricultural demand, and may be taken as a 

 fair price for the article as a manure j although, of course, its 

 entire value is not represented by its content of potash, as it yields, 

 also, an appreciable amount of phosphoric acid, and possibly some 

 readily available silicic acid. 



In regions where lime is burned with wood fuel, the ashes (un- 

 leached) are sold as a manure, but the large amount of lime that 

 becomes mixed with them considerably lessens their value as a 

 fertilizer, while its uncertain proportion makes it difficult to deter- 

 mine what their actual value is. Ordinarily, within reach of the 

 limekilns of Maine, they are estimated to be worth about the 

 same as leached ashes ; but there is always room for guessing in 

 making the purchase — they may be worth sometimes more and 

 sometimes less. 



The green sand marl of New Jersey, which has been devel- 

 oped within the past twenty or thirty years, has had the effect of 

 regenerating a very large tract of the South Jersey country which 

 was considered almost valueless for agricultural purposes, and of 

 doing much toward raising the entire State to the very first rank 

 as an agricultural region — for, probably, there is no district in the 

 country which, in proportion to the selling value of the land, and 

 to the population employed in agriculture, yields, year by year, 

 so large an amount of money as does that which lies within easy 

 hauling distance of the marl-pits stretching from the Atlantic 

 Ocean to the Delaware River ; and there is reason to believe that 



