ON THE USES OF SALT IX CULTIVATION. 55 



who possess neither (and there are many such) -will find their pur- 

 chase an economical investment. 



EDWIN M. STONE, Chairman. n 



Ljnn, October 1st, 18-i6. 



ON THE USES OF SALT IN CULTIVATION. 



Loudon, in his Gardener's Magazine, speaking of the Bezi de la 

 Motte pear, says : " It is truly surprising that a fruit said by Quin- 

 tenne, an old writer, to surpass the Dogenno in flavor, should have 

 been so long neglected, as to be but recently brought forward." It 

 is to me quite as strange that the uses of salt have been so long ne- 

 glected in agriculture. As a manure it was known in the time of 

 James I. and Charles I., as we find by the learned Gervase Mark- 

 ham, who says in his work on husbandry : "In all my former relations 

 touching the bettering of ground, I do apply, as one of my chiefest 

 ingredients, salt sand, salt weeds, salt water, salt brine, and many 

 other thinsrs of salt nature, as indeed as the manures and mai'les 

 whatsoever must either have a salt quality in them ;" and again : 

 "If your ground lye farre from the sea, then to every acre of land 

 you shall take two bushels of bay salt, and in such manner as you 

 sow your wheat, you shall sow this salt upon the ground." Lord 

 Bacon, of the seventeenth century, having noticed the success of 

 the Cornwall farmers, declares that the " best manure next to marie 

 is sea sand, which no doubt obtaineth a special virtue by the salt 

 water, as salt is the first rudiment of life." A more modern Scotch 

 writer affirms that " the finest crops of hemp and flax raised by the 

 Milanese, are from lands on which salt is strewed." The same writer 

 says : "As to the proportion of salt to be used on land, it ought to 

 be according to the nature of it ; cold, wet, clayey land requiring 

 more, and loose soft sand, though it be poor, requiring less." In 

 Hitt's Treatise on Fruit Trees, he asserts, upon a sandy soil, sixteen 

 bushels to be a proper quantity for one acre. " Twice only," says 

 he, " have I had an opportunity of buying a few tons of foul salt, 

 using it both times on a barley tilth, sowing the salt immediately after 

 the barley ; the event was perfectly satisfactory, the verdure of the 



