92 Farmers' Miscellany. [Jan. 



SOAKING OF SEEDS IN SALINE SOLUTIONS. 



BY N. S. DAVIS. M. D. 



As the next number of your valuable Journal will be issued 

 about the time our farmers and gardeners begin to prepare their 

 seed for the soil, it may not be amiss for me to send you, on pa- 

 per, a few of my observations on that subject. It is well known 

 that during the last few years, the great benefits to be derived 

 from soaking seeds in saline solutions, have been heralded over 

 the country, not only by many agricultural journals, but through 

 almost every newspaper in the land. Of course many of our 

 farmers were induced to try the experiment, and myself among 

 the number. The result has been precisely what I had antici- 

 pated, namely: that there is a little truth mixed with a great 

 quantity of error, in all the highly laudatory statements on this 

 subject. Last spring and summer, I prepared solutions of muriate 

 of ammonia, muriate of soda, nitrate of soda, sulphate of soda, 

 and nitrate of ammonia, and soaked seeds in all of them, during 

 various periods of time, from three to sixty hours. The seeds 

 soaked were corn, oats, peas, beans, melon seeds, cucumber 

 seeds, &c. But to make my experiments fairly, I always soaked 

 an equal quantity of seed in pure water, and during the same 

 length of time as in the saline solution. Both were then planted 

 side by side, in the same soil. In regard to the corn, peas, and 

 beans, no possible difference could be detected, either in the time 

 required for them to come up, or in the vigor of their growth 

 after they were up, between those soaked in water and those 

 in any of the saline solutions; provided the soaking was not 

 continued beyond twelve or fourteen hours. But when the soak- 

 ing was continued considerably longer than this, it seemed to do 

 positive injury; and one instance of peas, soaked in a moderately 

 strong solution of muriate of soda for forty-eight hours, almost 

 entirely failed to germinate or sprout, while those soaked the 

 same length of time in water, and were planted side by side with 



