MK. NKWELL'S ADDRESi?. 11 



or two for corn to be fed green to the stock. This land, the follow- 

 ing year, is in good condition for a root crop. 



I have made some experiments with salt, lime, and plaster. For 

 the three last years, I have used about a table-spoon-full of salt in 

 the hills of corn and potatoes. I first used it to guard the seed from 

 injury by the dung-worm. It kept off the worm to some extent, but 

 not wholly — but I became confident it benefitted the crop. I tried 

 it this year, on a small piece, in larger quantities, say a gill to a 

 hill ; the eifecton the corn was, it did not vegetate,— the potato with- 

 stood it.^ 



I would not venture to say that salt will in any degree prevent the 

 potato-rot, without further experiments. But I can say that last 

 year at digging-time, not a rotten potato was found where I used salt, 

 and but a few were aifected with the dry-rot during the winter. The 

 kinds were Long Reds, Chenango, a blue potato, — seed obtained from 

 Madawaska — and the Lady Fingers. Not an unsound potato has 

 been found in digging for family use, the whole season. The crop 

 has not been taken up, thinking they may still prove defective. 

 If they are to rot, I had rather it would be where they are, than 

 in the cellar. From what I have seen, I think early-digging is 

 no safeguard against rot in potatoes, unless it is on land flooded with 

 water, and there they always rotted. I have read a great deal 

 that has been written on the disease in the potato, if it is to be call- 



*To show you that the using of salt as manure, is no new idea, I quote from a writer 

 in the reign of James the first, by liie name of Markham, who lived more than two cen- 

 turies ago. The following sentence is ia Markham's Farewell to Husbandry: — 



"If you be neere unto any part of the sea-coast, thence fetch great store of the salt 

 land, and with it cover your groun4 which hath been formerly plowed and backed, and 

 allowing unto every acre of ground three score or four score full bushels of sand which is 

 a Terry good and competent proportion, and this sand thus laid shall be verry well spread 

 and mixed among the other broken earth. And herein is to be noted that not any other 

 sand l)ut the salt is good or available for this purpose. Now methinks I hear it objected 

 that if the ground do lie so far within the land that there is no salt sand within many score 

 miles of it, how then shall I make gojd my barren earth. I answer, that albeit this salt 

 sand be of infinite good and necessary use, inriching grounds wonderl'ully much — If your 

 land be far from the sea, then to every acre of land yon shall take two bushels of verry dry 

 bay salt, and in such manner as you sow your wheat you shall sow this salt ; and after 

 you sow your salt you shall sow your wheat, which wheat would be thus prepared before 

 you sow it. The day before you are to sow your grain, you shall take bay salt and water 

 and make a brine that will bear an egg — then put the wheat you are to sow into the brine 

 and let it steep therein untill the next day ; then drain it from the brine and so sow it, 

 and 110 doubt but you will find a marvellous great increase thereby. Neither is the thing 

 itself without good and strong jirobability of much increase and stcngth for the bettering 

 of all manner of arnble lands." 



