140 



£hc farmer's ifttmthlt? itfsttor. 



oi' the agricultural society, Guv. Lincoln now 

 informs us that this socieiy has .1 vested cash 

 fund of niuc thousand dollars, contributing each 

 year to the amount of premiums offered. That 

 noble society has acted well its part in the last 

 twenty years in stimulating the enterprise so ra- 

 pidly advancing to wealth. The beautiful city 

 of Worcester is adorned by its fruit and vegeta- 

 ble gardens which have mainly grown up within 

 the last ten years under the salutary efforts of 

 the men and women of that place who from a 

 small beginning have been able to make each 

 succeeding exhibition of fruits and flowers n( 

 homogeneous growth better than its predeces- 

 sor : and what is remarkable of this city now is 

 that her excellent municipal regulations, aided 

 by individual efforts, have made those fruits and 

 flowers as safe from any anticipated depreda- 

 tions by night and h\ day in the open enclosures 

 near her most frequented streets, as if the whole 

 were under lock and key : the certainty that 

 depredators will be made obliged dearly to pay 

 for what they take without asking, brings the 

 smallest child in that " way he should go" to re- 

 Sjiect the property which does not belong to 

 him, or his parents, and to obtain by gift or pur- 

 chase what the youthful appetite may crave — a 

 better form than to obtain it by theft, which 

 comes at last to shift itself from stealthy shyness 

 to imprudent boldness in those villages where it 

 is repealed with impunity. 



What 1 have said of the heart of your Com- 

 monwealth ivill apply with still greater force to 

 that part of my native Slate which embraces the 

 old county of Essex. Where shall we find, in 

 8'iv part of the United States, the wealth and 

 prosperity wllir.ll have been gained by persever- 

 ance and industry greater than hers? More 

 than a hundred years has the town of your ex- 

 hibition been celebrated for the excellent quality 

 of its shoe manufactures : 1 can remember, 

 when residing near my birth-place a few miles 

 out of Boston, the elegant and delicate high- 

 heeled cloth shoes always made in Lynn which 

 were worn by ladies in all the circles of gentility 

 anil fashion fifty years ago: to make shoes equal 

 to those of Lynn was an art which could he 

 then learned only hy going to and serving an 

 apprenticeship at Lynn. The products of the 

 shoe business, as well of leather as of cloth, I 

 was told three years ago were greater in amount 

 in your county of Essex than the whole amount 

 of the value of cotton produced in the two 

 Carolines which were the first great origi- 

 nals of the important cotton growth of this 

 country. It is to he regretted that, by no fault 

 of the. present generation existing, the institu- 

 tions of the southern Siates should admit of a 

 retrogade movement in the worn-out soil which 

 had been first luxuriant in cotton, while every 

 production conducive to the prosperity and wel- 

 fare of our country at the north has been upon 

 the rise and increase. 



II;.\in_' several years ago, when onions bore 

 the price as four for one to potatoes, of a dollar 

 Ihe bushel, attempted to encourage their produc- 

 tion in my own village, and failing to do it in 

 the belief that ten bushels of potatoes might be 

 raised with less can? and labor than a single 

 bushel of onions — I was surprised, on the first 

 year of opening our railroad, to find onions 

 raised in your towns of Newbury and Delivers 

 selling in Boston at forty cents the bushel: still 

 later, and tin longer ago than last year, I found I 

 could pay for the transport both ways and make 

 the exchange even, a barrel of onions for a bar- 



rel of potatoes. Consulting with my friend 

 King at Washington (always friendly there as 

 every where else when talking of agricultural 

 improvements) I found he was interested in 

 fields of onions in Dan vers where sales at an 

 average not much exceeding thirty-four cents 

 the bushel had presented a clear profit of more 

 than one hundred dollars to the acre of the 

 onion crop. From your last year's transactions 

 furnished by him I extracted for my Monthly 

 Visitor some interesting information relative to 

 the culture of onions. The process is exceed- 

 ingly simple : with the right stimulants in the 

 soil I believe we might make as good and profit- 

 able onion beds as you are now making in Dan- 

 vers and elsewhere in your county. Much 

 would be gained by bringing into action in all 

 kinds of culture those mineral manures which 

 pervade the subsoil below every cultivated field 

 whether of iiehter sand or more tenacious clay. 

 To aid the easy cultivation of onions, as well as 

 carrots and other root vegetables apt to be trou- 

 bled with weeds, manures chymieally prepared 

 so that the dirt of weeds shall not appear with 

 '.he coming up of the seeds intended to grow, 

 would make the tending of the field of garden 

 vegetables quite as easy as the raising of corn 

 and potatoes. When it is considered that four 

 to eight hundred bushels of onions or carrots 

 can be raised on a properly prepared acre of 

 light sandy loam, it may be no longer wondered 

 that the Dan vers farmers can grow rich on a 

 small plat of laud growing onions at the 

 prices for which they may be exchanged for po- 

 tatoes. 



Your society, which has existed ever since the 

 d iys of its eminent founder and patron, Timothy 

 Pickering, who was in advance of his time on 

 agricultural improvement at least fifty years, has 

 in its time done much to advance the value and 

 extent of the productions of our mother earth. 

 My first knowledge of it is associated with your 

 name, as was the name of Derby of your county 

 in the still earlier publication of the efforts 

 made through the State Society of Massachu- 

 setts which annually had its exhibitions at 

 Brighton. You, sir, were preceded by other 

 men eminent as statesmen, jurists, merchants 

 and divii.es of the old Bay State, of whom were 

 a Tyng, a Saltonstall, a Bartlett, a Pickering, a 

 Cutler, a Pickman and the Crowuinshiehls. Ten 

 thousand people were represented as having at- 

 tended the exhibition on Wednesday last to 

 which your letter invited me; of whom were 

 men of eminence of the present day no less 

 perhaps than the men of its early existence. 

 Will not this prove that our efforts in this pro- 

 gressive work may not be without their use? As 

 the first business of my youth and the last busi- 

 ness of my age, I am glad to hear the testimony 

 of in; own experience in saying that the great- 

 est satisfaction will he derived from the success- 

 ful pursuit of bringing out of the ground the 

 necessary sustenance for man and beast. 

 I am, with much respect, 



Your friend and obedient servant, 



ISAAC HILL. 



Action of .tlarl and Lime. 



Elilors of Ihe Culllvnlor : — In the article on 

 " .Manures — Their Nature and Action," in the 

 June number of the Cultivator, an allusion was 

 made to 11 mineral substance found in New Jer- 

 sey and further south, and known as "green 

 sand," which possesses very valuable properties 

 as a manure. 



1 suppose it would be useless for me to say 



any thing about marl. To all who are interested 

 iu it, it is already perhaps sufficiently well 

 known. As stated in the article referred to, 

 " its great value is chiefly due to the potash it 

 contains." 



But there is another mineral substance, which 

 is found in a bed extending through a portion of 

 the State Iroin New Egypt to Vincenlown, and 

 is found I think, a few miles south of Haddon- 

 field. I allude to what Prof. H. D. Rogers calls 

 ■' a straw-colored limestone," hut more particu- 

 larly to the thin limestone stratum of the vicini- 

 ty of Vincentown. This is not so well known 

 nor so extensively found as the marl. Prof. Ro- 

 gers' analysis of it gives " lime, 49.69, carbonic 

 acid 38.31, silica and other impurities, 9.00, wa- 

 ter, 3.00— making about 88 per cent, of it carbo- 

 nate of lime." In speaking of where the beds 

 of limestone had been cut through, by digging a 

 well into the green sand stratum underneath, 

 Prof Rogers says — "It was in thin irregular 

 beds, separated hy incohering sand and calcare- 

 ous grains, similar to the mixture which compo- 

 ses the rock ; its total thickness was about six 

 feet ; the organic remains are the same which 

 characterize the limestone of Vincentown." It 

 is now found in places from fifteen to more than 

 twenty feet thick. But it is not the stone, p; 

 which I wished more particularly to call atten- 

 tion, hut rather " the incohering sand and calca- 

 reous grains" by which its strata are separa- 

 ted. 



If a test by effervescence with acid would be 

 sufficient to judge by, I should suppose that this 

 incohering sand contains nearly or quite as much 

 carbonate of lime as the stone itself If so, per- 

 haps it may be called by way of distinction, pul- 

 verized limestone. 



I suppose this bed or carbonate of lime was not 

 placed there for nothing. In what way it may 

 become useful to man, and to what extent? are 

 questions of some importance. How far will 

 pulverized carbonate of lime answer in the 

 place of quick lime? 



I think Liebig advances the idea in his Chem- 

 ical Letters, that one of '.he most important uses 

 of lime oil land is, that hy its caustic property, it 

 may assist in disintegrating the soil, and render- 

 ing the alkalis, or potash contained in it, capable 

 of becoming soluble in water, and thus taken up 

 by the fibrous roots of plants requiring it. 



And he illustrates this opinion by describing a 

 plan decomposing feldspar, a mineral which 

 contains potash, and forms a component part of 

 the most widely diffused of the primitive rocks. 

 In this case, I suppose the carbonate of lime 

 would he of but little use. 



Yet some farmers who have been in the habit 

 of using lime for many years, say they think a 

 heap of lime, which has lain eighteen months or 

 longer, and thus heroine principally carbonate, is 

 quite as beneficial to the soil as one spread im- 

 mediately after slaking. 



Ii is known that almost all marls contain in- 

 gredients injurious to vegetation. These are 

 principally copperas and alum. Although some 

 contain a much smaller proportion of them than 

 others; yet it is found that where land has been 

 marled for a nun. her of j ears, a continued ap 

 plication of it, without lime, is attended with but 

 litile beneficial effect, while the soil seems to ac- 

 quire a strong inclination to produce sorrel. 

 Prof II. I). Rogers recommends as an antidote 

 to the poisonous principles contained in marl, 

 the use of "caustic or freshly burnt lime." Yet 

 11 simple experiment will show that carbonate of 

 lime "ill decompose copperas or alum, as well 

 as the caustic. Take a little pulverized copperas 

 and mix it with a similar quantity of this pul- 

 verized carbonate of lime. Add a little water to 

 the mixture. The appearance of rust or red 

 oxide of iron iu ihe mixture, will show that the 

 copperas (sulphate of iron) is decomposed ; — 

 while the effervescence will as surely indicate 

 that tiie sulphuric is taking the place of the car 

 honic acid; and the latter being set free, in es- 

 caping causes the effervescence. In a similar 

 experiment with alum, in the place of copperas 

 a like effervescence will as readily indicate a 

 mutual decomposition. And a practical agricul- 

 tural experiment would seem to accord with 

 those of chemistry. 



A strip of land which had been marled seve- 

 ral times within the last twenty years, (but had 



