32 FERTILIZERS. 



are doing. " The result of a study of a long list of experi- 

 ments," says the " Connecticut Agricultural Report " of 

 1880, u is to prove clearly that in many instances the 

 reason why guano, fish, bone, superphosphate, and other 

 manures fail to give a satisfactory result is, for want of 

 potash." In cases where fish or night-soil has been used 

 exclusively as fertilizers for a series of years, the soil some- 

 times bakes, and becomes nearly sterile ; the application 

 of potash to such soils is often followed by very strik- 

 ing results. On land where potash did no good applied 

 to corn, it did prove valuable to potatoes alongside : " and, 

 if it does good under such circumstances, it might be 

 assumed to do good to potatoes on any soil ; and such is 

 the fact." On some soils the effect of potash is very strik- 

 ing. On the farm of Mr. Sage, one of the enterprising 

 experimenters with chemicals, potash paid him ten times 

 its cost on corn, potatoes, oats, and wheat. A good deal 

 more enterprise along the line of these soil-tests would 

 pay all of us brother farmers a heavier per cent than we 

 ever received from any savings bank. The effect of all 

 forms of potash is decidedly greater if applied in the fall 

 or winter. The sulphate and muriate may be mixed with 

 any fertilizer, as they will not free the ammonia. Un- 

 leached ashes, the agricultural chemists tell us, can be 

 safely mixed with guano, flesh, blood, castor-pomace, 

 cotton-seed meal, and with stable manure (if it is not in 

 a fermenting condition), if in each instance a little soil is 

 thrown over the mass, or they are ploughed under soon after 

 mixing. If the ashes are first treated with sulphuric acid, 

 so as to change the carbonate of potash they contain, which 

 is volatile, into a sulphate which is not volatile, it may 

 then be used like the German potash salts, and be freely 

 mixed with any manure, under any circumstances. Guano, 

 given in the above list, I should take exception to ; for, 



