APPENDIX, 276 



fectly with us last season, a rather unusually warm and long one,) 

 farmers would do well to cultivate it more extensively than any 

 other kind. 



The use of dry ashes on our black soil grass lands showed au in- 

 creased benefit from last year. But our experiments with liquid 

 manure disappointed us. Either from its not being of the requisite 

 strength, or from the dryness of the season, or from our mistaking 

 the effects of it last year, or from all these causes combined, the 

 results confidently anticipated, were not realized ; and from our 

 experiments this year we have nothing to say in favor of its use, 

 although we think it worthy of further experiments. On the first 

 view of the subject, a dry season or a dry time might seem more 

 favorable to the manifestations of benefit from watering plants with 

 liquid manure, than wet seasons or times. But when we consider 

 that when the surface of the earth is dry, the small quantity of 

 liquid used would be arrested by the absorbing earth ere it reached 

 the roots, and perhaps its fertilizing qualities changed, evaporated, 

 or otherwise destroyed, by the greater heat to which at such times 

 it must be exposed — it is not, I think, improbable that the different 

 effects noticed in our experiments with this substance, the two past 

 years, might be owing to this cause. It is my intention, should 

 suBlcient leisure permit, to analyze the soil cultivated and the mud 

 used, and prepare a short essay on the subject of peat mud, muck, 

 gaud, &c., as manure, for publication in the next volume of the 

 transactions of the society. 



Yours, respectfully, 



Andrew Nichols. 



Danvers, December 20, 1840, 



No. II. 



EXTEACT FEGM Dr, NiCHOLS's LeTTER- 



Danvers, Jan. 28, 1842. 

 Dear Sir : — I am sorry to say that I have no new facts to com- 

 municate. Nor have I anything that contradicts my former views 

 on the subject of peat, as manure. We used it in compost on about 



