APPENDIX 



No. 1. 



Db. Nichols's Statements, from the Essex County Agricultu- 

 ral Transactions, 1839-40. 



To the Committee to whom was referred the Communication of 

 Andrew Nichols, on the subject of Compost Manures, Sfc. 



Gentlemen : — Persuaded of the importance of the discoveries 

 made by Dr. Samuel L. Dana, of Lowell, and given to the world 

 through the medium of the reports of Professor Hitchcock and 

 Rev. H. Oolman, to the Legislature of Massachusetts, concerning 

 the food of vegetables, geine, and the abundance of it in peat mud, 

 in an insoluble state, to be sure, and in that state not readily 

 absorbed and digested by the roots of cultivated vegetables, but 

 rendered soluble and very easily digestible by such plants, by 

 potash, wood ashes, or other alkalies, among which is ammonia, one 

 of the products of fermenting animal manures, I resolved last year 

 to subject his theories to the test of experiment the present season. 

 Accordingly, I directed a quantity of black peat mud, procured by 

 ditching, for the purpose of draining and reclaiming an alder swamp, 

 a part of which I had some years since brought into a state highly 

 productive of the cultivated grasses, to be thrown in heaps. Dur- 

 ing the winter I also had collected, in Salem, 282 bushels of un- 

 leached wood ashes, at the cost of 12i cents per bushel. These 

 were sent up to my farm, a part to spread on my black soil grass 



