202 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



chemical agents as are needed, crops of every description can be 

 raised, satisfactory and remunerative to the hiisl)andman. 



Colonel Wilder. Can potash be combined with coal ashes, 

 so as to make them as efficient and useful as good wood ashes ? 



Dr. Nichols. I would say that I have made numerous ex- 

 periments, having that end in view. We make a very incon- 

 venient and pasty mass in the use of potasii, because we are 

 obliged to use it in solution before we can' restore to the ashes 

 the potash, which has been leached from therti. Now, a bushel 

 of ashes, — the ordinary ashes that are found upon our hearths, 

 which are a mixture of soft and hard varieties of wood, — will 

 give us a little more than four pouiids of potash^ I presume 

 our soap-makers get about three and a half pounds upon the 

 average. Now, we may buy in the market three and a half or 

 four pounds of commercial potash, and we can mix that with 

 coal ashes or muck, and make a mixture which will correspond 

 in its potash strength with ashes; but it is quite inconvenient. 

 But when you have added potasli to coal ashes or to muck, you 

 have not got what is contained in wood ashes, because you get 

 in them soda, soluble silicate, and phosphate of lime. "Wood 

 ashes hold in association those elements of plant nutriment- 

 which correspond,of course, with the structure from which they 

 are obtained, and consequently you restore to the land the 

 elements taken from it by placing ashes upon the land. They 

 have a very high value, in my estimation. I should say that 

 commercial potash can be used, but not comfortably. I should 

 never encourage it among my farming friends. 



Colonel Wilder. Is it sufficient in restoring all these things 

 which we call potash, and which are so necessary for plant 

 growth ? 



Dr. Nichols. Oh, yes, sir'. The ordinary caustic potash of 

 commerce is precisely the material which is taken from ashes. 



Colonel Wilder. I formerly combined it in that way, and I 

 found it quite useful. 



1 have never been more gratified in my life than I bave been 

 by the lecture this forenoon, and doubt not, that is the senti- 

 ment of this assembly. It was not only a scientific, but a prac- 

 tical one ; it was science based on practice. 



Now, 1 have tried ground bones and leached ashes, as my 



