FERTILIZERS. 21 



agency of the secondary salts present, such as common 

 salt and sulphate of magnesia. These salts may promote 

 the solution of all the plant-nourishing material in the soil ; 

 hence the favorable action of kainite upon swamp-lands, newly 

 cleared land, and all lands abounding in vegetable matter. 

 They also benefit sandy soils by keeping them more moist. 

 German agricultural writers advise to apply kainite in 

 fall or winter, or the year previous, that the chlorides 

 may be diluted and washed down, and so be made harm- 

 less. They believe it is to be the foundation-rock of all 

 improvement on swamp-lands, as it has already brought 

 great blessings to the poor dwellers among the bogs and 

 moors of North Germany. 



While plaster dissolves in four hundred and sixty times 

 its weight of water, kainite dissolves in one and three- 

 fourths its weight. Some fear is felt by our agricultural 

 chemists that farmers are using too much of these varieties 

 of potash having so large a per cent of salt in their com- 

 position. There may be ground for this in its application 

 to some crops. Five hundred pounds of kainite per acre 

 would carry with it less than three bushels of salt, which, 

 repeated for a series of years, might in the end prove hurt- 

 ful to some of our crops : but much of this would pass off 

 in the drainage of the soil ; while I have, by mistake, had 

 as high as thirty bushels applied to an acre of onions in 

 one year, with certainly no detriment to the crop. 



In his report for 1882, Professor Dabney of the North 

 Carolina agricultural experiment station devotes twenty- 

 two pages to kainite and its uses. " Kainite," he says, " is 

 now an established specific against rust in cotton, and is 

 undoubtedly of great value, in connection with phosphate 

 and pease, as an improver of the soil." It appears that 

 about all brought into Carolina is in the crude state, just 

 as mined, costing five dollars per 2,240 pounds at Stass- 

 furt, and having an average composition of 



