FERTILIZERS. 3 



abounding in salt. A neighbor, some years ago, used a 

 large quantity of salt-marsh mud on his potatoes. The 

 result was a fine crop of remarkably smooth potatoes: 

 but he could not sell a second lot to the same customer ; 

 they were so watery as to be utterly useless for table use. 

 Kainite, with lime or superphosphate, appears to be a 

 special manure for pease and beans. On boggy land, where 

 nitrogenous manures injured the crops, kainite was a suc- 

 cess, surpassing even the richer potash salts. 



WOOD ASHES. 



Wood ashes are our great home source for potash. 

 These are brought into the market from several sources, 

 the product of the brick-kiln, lime-kiln, or from the 

 woods of Canada or the far West. " Wood ashes," says 

 Professor Goessmann, "have an agricultural value much 

 above their chemical value." The principal reason of this 

 is, that they contain, not only potash, but all the elements 

 of plant-food except nitrogen, and these in just the same 

 proportions as they exist in nature, with the additional 

 advantage of having them in a very fine state of subdi- 

 vision. The main source of supply for the Eastern States 

 has been, of late years, those brought from Canada ; single 

 firms selling several hundreds of thousands of bushels 

 annually. The wood of different trees differs, not only in 

 the proportion of potash, lime, and phosphoric acid in 

 their ashes, but also in the quantity of their ashes in 

 equal quantities by measure of wood. Professor Johnson 

 gives the following analysis of birch, hickory, oak, and 

 chestnut wood. In the last two columns is the analysis, 

 by Professor Storer, of thirteen samples of unleached Can- 

 ada ashes, and also thirteen samples taken from household 

 fires : 



