40 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



of potassium ; the presence of potassa and magnesia enhances 

 its value. Nobody acquainted with these facts would credit the 

 good results obtained by their indiscriminate use to the salt 

 alone. We find, thus, that the leading agriculturists of Europe, 

 after years of practical and scientific investigation, have arrived 

 at the conclusion that the benefits to be derived from a direct 

 use of salt are quite exceptional, on account of its general, 

 although limited, diffusion throughout our cultivated soils, and 

 its slight demand on the part of our farm plants in general ; 

 and that its exceptional good effects, wherever noticed must be 

 due to its indirect influences on the soil and its inorganic plant- 

 food. Some of these indirect influences are : it aids in the 

 solution of phosphate of lime, in the transformation of gypsum, 

 etc. ; it increases the water-absorbing properties of soil — hence 

 its effect upon dry and warm soil — and assists thus, apparently, 

 by both its chemical and physical action, in a more speedy dis- 

 integration of the soil. The practice of adding saline mother 

 liquor to liquid barn manure, or salt to dry barn manure, or to 

 compost manure, or to guano, or to superphosphates, and to 

 all such other artificial fertilizers, which are affecting its com- 

 position, derives its general recognition as being frequently a 

 good one, no doubt, from such exceptional influences as previ- 

 ously enumerated. 



In reviewing my previous statements, I am inclined to indorse 

 the advice I read off: the safest and cheapest may of siippl?/ing- 

 salt to your farm Ia?ids, if at all desirable, is to feed it to your 

 live stock, for natural channels of distribution are always the 

 best. 



MINERAL MANURES. 



The President. The subject for discussion is Mineral 

 Manures. All our fertilizers are divided into two great classes 

 — organic and inorganic. The organic manures come from the 

 air, that great reservoir provided by nature. The inorganic 

 manures, which are found in the ashes of plants, must be de- 

 rived from the soil, and they are far more important than we 

 generally consider them. These inorganic manures are very 

 apt to be exhausted from the soil, by being carried off in the 

 crops. I think all our old farms are suffering greatly for the 



