APPENDIX. 237 



do well to cultivate it more extensively than any other kind. 



The use of dry ashes on our black soil grass lands, showed 

 an increased 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 fur- 

 ther experiments. On the first view of the subject, a dry sea- 

 son or a dry time might seem more favorable to the manifesta- 

 tions of benefit from watering plants with liquid manure, than 

 wet seasons or times. But when we consider that wben 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 b« exposed — it is not, I think, improbable that 

 the different effects noticed in our experiments with this sub- 

 stance, the two past years, might be owing to this cause. It 

 is my intention, should sufficient leisure permit, to analyze the 

 soil cultivated and the mud used, and prepare a short essay on 

 the subject of peat mud, muck, sand, &c, as manure, for pub- 

 lication in the next volume of the transactions of the society. 

 Yours, respectfully, 



ANDREW NICHOLS. 



Danversy December 20, 1840. 



]\ T o. II. — Extract from Dr. Nichols's Letter. 



Danvers, Jan. 28, 1842. 

 Dear Sir:— I am sorry to say that 1 have no new facts to 

 communicate. Nor have I any thing that contradicts my for- 

 mer views on the subject of peat, as manure. We used it in 

 compost on about nine acres of corn and potatoes last summer, 

 one-half of which was the same land on which it was used the 

 preceding season. Its effect seemed not to be lessened by this 



