58 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan. 



buds. They will be so thick that they will eat off the tops 

 of the buds before they get high enough to cut. I know of 

 no remedy. Of course it will not do to put on any poison ; 

 it will not do even to put on fine lime. That is one of those 

 questions which are coming up every year, as to wdiat we 

 shall do to conquer the creeping things of the earth. Some- 

 times it seems as if they were going to conquer us, but 

 then we find a remedy, and something else comes in ; so I 

 suppose they are going to keep on coming, and thus we have 

 got to grow wiser and wiser if we would succeed in our 

 agricultural projects. 



Mr. Stone of Watertown. It was said by Mr. Hender- 

 son that asparagus does not require salt. I think that 

 five out of ten men use salt. I know the best asparagus bed 

 I ever saw in my life is a bed which belongs to one of my 

 neighbors, and that bed has not had a spoonful of manure 

 or any kind of fertilizer whatever for ten years except salt. 

 That bed, which occupies an acre and a quarter, has netted 

 not less than four hundred dollars a year, and from that to 

 six hundred. The owner says he would not take the trouble 

 to give it a coat of manure if you would give him the 

 manure. The salt not only does the work of fertilizers, but 

 it keeps the weeds down ; and it is the cleanest bed that I 

 have known of for years, it produces the largest stalks, and 

 is the best paying bed that I have seen in the town. 



Mr. Henderson. I think the gentleman will have to look 

 to some other cause. The reason why I am so positive in 

 the belief that salt is no benefit to asparagus, is the fiict that 

 asparagus beds grown in the vicinity of New York Bay, 

 where the wdiole atmosphere is impregnated with salt, give 

 us no better crops than inland, where there is no salt spray 

 whatever, and yet the beds are not treated with salt. I live 

 about half a mile from the bay, and on moist days you can 

 feel the salt on your lips ; and yet asparagus grown there is 

 certainly no better than it is twelve miles inland. I have 

 examined the question very thoroughly, and while this is, of 

 course, negative evidence, still, there is the fact that where 

 the atmosphere and soil are impregnated with salt there is no 

 apparent benefit to asparagus, or, in fact, to anything 

 else. 



