MANURES. 



MANURES. 



Crouch. It was long, however, the supersti- 

 tious belief of the district, that the salt-water 

 wetting must be the result of accident to produce 

 a good effect. The Cornish farmers have for 

 centuries used the saline calcareous sand of the 

 coasts of Devon, which contains 64 per cent. 

 of lime, fetching it for some miles from the 

 shore, in preference, says Dr. Paris, to the un- 

 salted sand, which they can procure at their 

 own doors. The very mixture of salt and lime 

 was successfully employed in Ayrshire many 

 years since. And George Sinclair, in 1818, 

 very nearly demonstrated at Woburn the value 

 of this application. He unfortunately, how- 

 ever, applied the salt and the lime separately, 

 yet still with considerable benefit. (C. W. John- 

 fan's Essay on Salt, p. 40.) The use of salt and 

 lime was noticed in the year 1800, by Mr. Hol- 

 lingshead, of Chorley, in Lancashire, who ob- 

 serves, "Lime prepared for manure should 

 be slacked with salt springs or salt-water; 

 lime so slacked will have a double effect." In 

 1804, in the experiments of the late Rev. Ed- 

 mund Cartwright, upon potatoes, of 25 ma- 

 nures, or mixtures of manures, salt and lime 

 were found superior, in their product of pota- 

 toes, to 19 others. And in 1816, Mr. James 

 Manley, of Anderton, in Cheshire, when giving 

 his evidence before a committee of the House 

 of Commons, on the salt duties, mentioned that 

 in getting marl (which is a mixture of carbo- 

 nate of lime, alumina, and silica), he had 

 found that, by mixing it with brine instead of 

 water, the portion of the field on which the 

 brined marl was used yielded 5 bushels of 

 wheat per acre more than that portion on 

 which the watered marl was employed. 



The use of ashes as manure may be traced 

 to a very early age. The Roman farmers were 

 well acquainted with paring and burning. 

 Cato recommends the burning of the twigs and 

 branches of trees, and spreading them on the 

 land. Palladius says, that soils thus treated 

 would not require any other manure for 5 

 years. They also burnt their stubbles a prac- 

 tice common amongst the Jews in Palestine. 

 The ancient Britons, according to Pliny, were 

 used to burn their wheat-straw and stubble, 

 and spread the ashes over the soil ; and Conrad 

 Herebasch, a German counsellor, in his Trea- 

 tise on Husbandry, published in 1575, which was 

 translated by Googe, tells us (p. 20), "In Lom- 

 bardie they like so well the use of ashes, as 

 they esteem it far above doung, thinking doung 

 not meete to be used for the unwholesomness 

 thereof." 



Gypsum, or sulphate of lime, when employed 

 as it exists in an impure state in ashes, which 

 owe all theirvirtues to the gypsum they contain, 

 was used by the early Italian farmers. Virgil 

 (Georg. i. 1. 80) gives the following injunction : 



"Neve 



Effoetus cinenun immiir.dum jactare per agros." 



"Nor hesitate to scatter the dirty ashes over 

 the exhausted soils." And he also recom- 

 mends, in addition to ashes, two other reme- 

 dies for sterility of soil, viz. slercoratio (or ma- 

 miring), and glebarum cum stipulis incensio 

 (the turning up and burning the stubble). Ro- 

 bert Ainslie, steward to the celebrated John, 

 Earl of Stair, at Culhorn, in Wigtownshire, had 

 786 



very nearly discovered the agricultural advan- 

 tages of gypsum in 1728; for in that year the 

 earl sent from London several hogsheads of 

 peat-ashes, which abound in sulphate of lime, 

 with directions for their use, describing them 

 to Ainslie as being much employed in the 

 south of England as an admirable top-dressing 

 for grass, and even tillage lands. These ashes 

 were used, according to his lordship's direc- 

 tions, with great success, on both barley and 

 grass lands. Ainslie, convinced of their fer- 

 tilizing properties, immediately began to burn 

 turf, moss, and peat, for the use of the farm 

 under his care, in considerable quantities; he, 

 moreover, submitted these ashes to what he 

 very ludicrously calls an analysis, and gravely 

 tells us, that " with a great proportion of earthy 

 substances, they contained many particles of 

 lime or shelly matter." This was most proba- 

 bly the gypsum. 



The use of the mineral gypsum as a manure 

 was discovered in 1768, according to Kirwan, 

 by M. Meyer, a German clergyman of great 

 talents ; but as in those days the chemical 

 composition of gypsum was totally unknown, 

 he naturally confounded it with other calca- 

 reous earths which it resembled in appearan'ce. 

 His merit consisted in discovering the use of 

 a certain mineral substance existing in his 

 own neighbourhood, which was long after- 

 wards shown to be sulphate of lime, but of 

 which fact Meyer was entirely ignorant. Even 

 as early as 1792 gypsum was tried very suc- 

 cessfully by Mr. H. Smith, of Highstead, near 

 Sittingbourne, who first noticed, what has 

 since been confirmed by numerous observa- 

 tions, that clover manured with gypsum is 

 always preferred by horses and cattle to all 

 other clover. 



Sir Joseph Banks recommended this sub- 

 stance as a fertilizer to Lord Leicester, and, at 

 his suggestion, it was tried at Holkham many 

 years since; but, owing to mismanagement in 

 its application, it did not then appear to an- 

 swer the intended purpose. Some years after- 

 wards, owing to the \varm recommendation of 

 Mr. Grisenthwaite, it was again employed 

 pretty extensively by the same nobleman, and 

 with great success ; and so satisfied was this 

 great friend of agriculture with the result, that 

 he presented Mr. Grisenthwaite with a piece 

 of plate for his exertions in its introduction. 

 In a letter with which I was favoured from the 

 Rev. R. Collyer, dated Holkham, October 17th, 

 1837, that gentleman tells me, "Lord Leicester' 

 wishes me to say, in regard to gypsum, that its 

 effects, when applied to clover and sainfoin, 

 have been invariably such as to induce him to 

 speak from his own experience in favourable 

 terms of that fertilizer." It has since been 

 gradually creeping into use in the east and 

 south of England. Mills have been erected for 

 grinding it, and considerable quantities have 

 been brought from the northern counties ; but 

 still not one-thousandth part of the quantity is 

 employed in agriculture that would be used if 

 its correct mode of application were more 

 generally known ; since, from the small quan- 

 tity used per acre, and the low price of the arti- 

 cle, it constitutes one of the cheapest of the 

 artificial manures. 



