7^7 



Another compound of potash that has been used to a great 

 extent is the chloride or nnirate of potash. It is a manure that is 

 not to be recommended, more especially for the soils of this colony. 

 Professor Jamieson and others have shown that in a great many cases 

 it aets as a plant poison. The action that appears to take place- in the 

 decomposition of the chloride of potash by lime is the formation of 

 calcium chloride, which is very poisonous to plants. Tobacco 

 grown with it is not good, only an inferior quality of tobacco being 

 manufactured from the leaf. Potatoes become waxy when grown 

 with it, and it acts injuriously to sugar-beet by lowering the per- 

 centage of crystalli/able sugar. This does not occur with the sul- 

 phate of potash, but only when the chloride or murate is used. 

 Another clanger from the use of it is that it increases the amount of 

 chlorides in the soil. It is much easier putting these into the soil 

 than taking them out of it. In a great many places in this colony 

 there is too much chlorides in the soil. In some cases the soil is 

 fairly poisoned with them, so that hardly anything will grow in it, 

 and in others in a very sickly state. This state of affairs is also 

 brought about by irrigating with water containing a larg^ per- 

 centage of common salt, (chloride of sodium) also by using water 

 from saline springs flowing over land. A case in point came under 

 my notice lately, that of a large spring near Xortham, where nothing 

 grows near the course of the stream that flows from this spring for 

 a mile along its course. Before using water for irrigation one 

 should find out whether it contains anything injurious to vegetation. 

 The crops that do best in saline or salty soils are mangolds and 

 cabbage. 



LIME. 



Lime is one of the principal plant foods, and is as necessary to 

 the plant as nitrogen, phosphoric acid and potash. Most soils con- 

 tain lime in suffi.ient quantities for the requirements of all kinds of 

 crops, although there are soils too poor in lime to supply the 

 requirements of a crop, such soils being generally poor* and sandy. 

 Pasture land, as far as its surface is concerned, is liable to become 

 too poor in lime. The lime in a soil tends to sink down, at least in 

 pasture land. Thus we see how permanent pasture land is benefited 

 by lime. In arable land the plough brings the lime back t > the 

 surface until such time as it passes beyond the reach of the 

 plough. 



Until recent years we had no clear ideas as to the action of 

 lime in the soil, and still a great deal remains clouded in obscurity. 

 What I might call the multiplicity of the actions of lime on the soil 

 a d the ill-conceived notions of these actions, probably the result 

 of the contradictory experiences of farmers in different parts of 

 England has had much to do with the condemnatory ideas some 

 farmers hold regarding lime. There is no doubt its actions are 

 beneficial on some soils. It acts in three different ways mechani- 

 cally, chemically, and biologically. 



