1857. 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



2G5 



For the New England Farmer. 



MURIATE OF LIME. 



Mr. Editor : — In your paper of the IKh inst., 

 I observed an article headed "Muriate of Lime," 

 by I). W. Lothrop, of West Medford. This is the 

 second time I have been the subject of the gentle- 

 man's notice in this way, upon the subject of the 

 fertilizer invented by me ; the first attack was 

 made in Decemi^er last, which was replied to by 

 me on the 3d of January. 



The party having been answered in that case, he 

 waits over three months, and just at the time my 

 spring sales commence, evidently in a spirit of re- 

 taliation, comes out with the second attack, doubt- 

 less with the intention of injuring my sales, or hop- 

 ing from the long space of time which has elapsed 

 since my reply, that his readers may have forgotten 

 the gist of the argument. 



He says he had seen no direction showing how it 

 should be used, when, in fact, he alludes to my cir- 

 cular, which states expressly that it should be 

 mixed with meadotv mud, or with composted ma- 

 nure, at the rate of four barrels to the cord, and 

 should remain from three to six weeks before us- 

 ing. Every (good) farmer should know that an 

 article strong in alkaline salts, should not be put 

 in direct contact with the seed. 



He also comments very sarcastically upon my 

 statement that a "cloud of witnesses" could be 

 produced, showing the beneficial effect of the Mu- 

 riate. Now, Sir, I do not wish to obtrude myself 

 upon the public in this case, but am obliged so to 

 do, in self-defence, by this direct attack ; I have no 

 reason to expect any favor from the public in this 

 case, over and above what the merits of the Muriate 

 may deserve as a fertilizer. 



This article was used at the "State Farm at West- 

 boro'," the last season, under the direction of the 

 "Board of Agriculture," and, as is well known, this 

 committee is not only a large one, but composed 

 of the most distinguished gentlemen of the State, 

 in the department of agriculture. Their article on 

 Fertilizers appears on pages 268 and 269 of their 

 report, made and to be distributed on the first of 

 May (10,000 copies) by the Secretary of the Board. 



I have also received letters commendatory of the 

 article, from the following distinguished persons : 

 Hon. Amasa Walker, of West Brookfield, William 

 Whiting Esq., of Roxbury, W. F. Wheeler, Esq., of 

 Grafton, and as tnany other letters to the same ef- 

 fect, as would fill all the columns of your journal, 

 if printed at once ; and with the authority in most 

 cases to publish them if I wished so to do. 



I will also state in this connection, that I have 

 letters which I should be happy to show to any 

 gentlemen that will do me the honor to call upon 

 me at my office, No. 70 State Street. I would 

 also state that in one case, where an article was 

 published on "Crops and Fertilizers," in your jour- 

 nals, the writer gave his experience, in the use of 

 the "Muriate of Lime," showing its disastrous ef- 

 fects upon crops ; the inference to be drawn was 

 that it was the article named by me, but upon find- 

 ing who the writer was, I wrote to him upon the 

 subject, and you know, Sir, from his answer shown 

 to you by me, that the article to which he alluded 

 was acknowledged to be made by himself; and he 

 stated in his reply that the article which I called 

 Muriate of Lime, he had used to great advantage, 

 and it had produced a wonderful efiect on some 



plants, and he intended to use more of it. (Comment 

 upon the fairness of the above party in this case is 

 unnecessary.) In the closing part of Mr. Lothrop's 

 article, he says, "Further I have no desire to dis- 

 cuss this subject." 



Newspaper controversy is as disagreeable to n^e 

 as it can be to him, and I am perfectly willing to 

 leave the question between us to be settled by the 

 experience of intelligent and practical farmers. 



James Gould. 



Remarks. — It is due to Mr. Lothrop to say that 

 his last article was written immediately after Mr. 

 Gould's reply to his former one, and was dated Feb. 

 2nd, when published in the Farmer of week before 

 last. Whatever may have been his motive, in re- 

 plying to Mr. Gould, we do not think he has any 

 wish to affect that gentleman's business. 



THE CULTURE OF PLANTS. 



In order to render a soil fertile in the produc- 

 tion of vegetable substances, we should in the first 

 place make ourselves familiar with their constituents 

 and habits of growth ; for it is indispensable to this 

 condition of the soil that it contain all the mineral 

 ingredients discoverable by analysis in the ashes of 

 the plant or plants it is required to sustain. A 

 small portion, however, of these, are doubtless de- 

 rived from other sources, yet a perfectly well bal- 

 anced fertility nevertheless demands their presence 

 in the soil. Plants do not possess the power of 

 generating by the action of their own organic struc- 

 ture, a single elementary particle of which they are 

 composed ; they are endowed by nature merely with 

 the power of transmitting or modifying the form in 

 which these are ultimately combined and identified 

 with their own vitalized and organized being and 

 texture. By analytically examining, therefore, the 

 ashes left by plants after burning, we shall be en- 

 abled to supply to the soil, in the form of manure, all 

 the substances most essential to their successful and 

 healthy development, and without which, in an ade- 

 quate quantity, all our efforts to produce them in a 

 perfected state, will be worse than futile. Those sub- 

 stances must also exist in the soil, or be so incorpora- 

 ted with it as to render them at all times easily acces- 

 sible to the roots of the growing crop; and in such 

 quantity as to ensure the supply, required by the 

 progressive increase of bulk in the several members, 

 being sustained and regularly kept up by some 

 economical method of cultivation, till the vegetable 

 system is perfected, or the crop, to adopt the com- 

 mon farming phraseology, has "ripened off." 



If we accumulate the urine and solid matter 

 produced by those animals which have been fed 

 principally on green succulent substances, and keep 

 them unmixed with other matters, we shall find 

 that this, manure bears a more intimate relation to 

 the actually nutritive properties than to the weight 

 of the aliment, or food. We have not as yet been 



