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FARMERS' MISCELLANY 



SALT— A FERTILIZER. 



BY C. N. BEMENT. 



The value of salt for agricultural purposes, has long been 

 known, both in Europe and in this country, and why it has not 

 been more generally used is beyond my conprehension. More 

 than one hundred and fifty years ago, Sir Hugh Piatt, an eminent 

 writer of that day, speaks very decidedly of the benefits w^hich 

 might be derived from the practice of sprinkling salt upon land, 

 and calls it the " sweetest and cheapest, and the most 'philosophical 

 of all others." He relates the case of a man, who in passing 

 over a creek on the sea-shore, suffered his sack of seed corn to 

 fall into the water, and that it lay there until it was low^ tide, 

 when, being unable to purchase more seed, he sowed that w^hich 

 had been in the salt water, and when the harvest time arrived he 

 reaped a crop far superior to any in the neighborhood. The 

 writer adds, however, that it was supposed the corn would not 

 fructify in that manner unless it actually fell into the water by 

 chance; and, therefore, neither this man nor any of his neighbors 

 ever ventured to make any further use of salt water. 



The same curious writer tells also of a man who sowed a 

 bushel of salt, long since, upon a small plot of barren ground, and 

 that to that day (the time he was writing), it remained more 

 fresh and green than any of the ground round about it. 



Dr. Brownrig, who wrote more than a century ago, in speaking 

 of salt says, " it is dispersed over all nature; it is treasured up 

 in the bowels of the earth; it impregnates the ocean; it descends 

 in rains; it fertilizes the soil; it arises in vegetables; and from 

 them conveyed into animals." 



In the neighborhood of the salt works, in Great Britain, the 

 value of salt as a manure is well known and acknowledged; 

 " that when wheat and barley has followed turnips, on land which 



