APPENDIX. 271 



fiurmers of New England. By the knowledge and use of it, our 

 comparatively barren soils may be made to equal or excel in pro- 

 ductiveness the virgin prairies of the West. There were many hills 

 in which the corn first planted was destroyed by worms. A part 

 of these were supplied with the small Canada corn, a part with 

 beans. The whole was several times cut down by frost. The pro- 

 duce was three hundred bushels of ears of sound corn, two tons of 

 pumpkins and squashes, and some potatoes and beans. Dr. Dana, 

 in his letter to Mr. Colman, dated Lowell, March 6, 1839, suggests 

 the trial of a solution of geine as a manure. His directions for pre- 

 paring it arc as follows : " Boil one hundred pounds of dry pulver- 

 ized peat with two and a half pounds of white ash, (an article 

 imported from England,) containing 36 to 55 per cent, of pure soda, 

 or its equivalent in pearlash or potash, in a potash kettle, with 130 

 gallons of water ; boil for a few hours, let it settle, and dip off the 

 clear liquid for use. Add the same quantity of alkali and water, boil 

 and dip off as before. The dark colored brown solution contains 

 about half an ounce per gallon of vegetable matter. It is to be 

 applied by watering grain crops, grass lands, or any other way the 

 farmer's quick wit will point out." 



In the month of June, I prepared a solution of geine, obtained, 

 not by boiling, but by steeping the mud as taken from the meadow, 

 in a weak lye in tubs. I did not weigh the materials, being careful 

 only to use no more mud than the potash would render soluble. 

 The proportion was something like this : peat, 100 lbs. ; potash, 1 

 lb. ; water, 50 gallons, — stirred occasionally for about a week, when 

 the dark brown solution described by Dr. Dana, was dipped off 

 and applied to some rows of corn, a portion of a piece of starved 

 barley, and a bed of onions sown on land not well prepared for that 

 crop. The corn was a portion of a piece of manured as above 

 mentioned. On this the benefit was not so obvious. The crop of 

 barley on the portion watered, was more than double the quantity, 

 both in straw and grain, to that on other portions of the field, the 

 soil and treatment of which was otherwise precisely similar 



The bed of onions which had been prepared by dressing it with 

 a mixture of mud and ashes previous to the sowing of the seed, but 

 which had not by harrowing been so completely pulverized, mixed 



