NANTUCKET CATTLE SHOW. 423 



The people of Nantucket must, to a large degree, look to 

 agriculture to help them out of their depressed condition. 

 The records of the past, in numerous volumes of the report 

 of the Secretary of this Board, prove that there is great 

 capacity for production in their soil, — light, but warm, 

 quick and responsive, — and they show results from it in vari- 

 ous crops of a hundred dollars an acre. They have a limit- 

 less supply of a valuable fertilizer in the kelp and seaweed 

 cast up by the ocean, which costs them only the hauling. 



The analysis of seaweeds shows a great amount of most 

 valuable fertilizing material, amounting in the ash to more 

 than seventeen per cent, of potash, twelve of sodium, six- 

 teen of salt, seven of lime, seven of phosphate of lime and 

 twenty-four of sulphuric acid. It will be seen how rich 

 the seaweeds are in the mineral constituents so necessary to 

 plant-life, though not specially so in phosphoric acid. And 

 with such means of compelling fertility at their hands, they 

 should surpass any part of this Commonwealth in the earli- 

 ness and excellence of their vegetables and the cheapness 

 with which they could run them into market. And this 

 applies with certainly equal force to their farm crops of hay, 

 corn, grains and roots. 



The climate is unequalled in New England for mildness, 

 the records of the mcteoroloo-ical observers of the govern- 

 ment for years showing from 220 to 237 days in the year 

 without frost, while the larger part of the State gets but 

 from L50 to 160 days at the best ; and the lowest reaching 

 of the thermometer is for only a day or two in the year, at 

 6° below zero, when in other towns it indicated from 14° to 

 24° below zero. The mean temperature, also, for the year is 

 higher by from two to five degrees than in any town in New 

 England, being nearlv 50°. 



For a market, beside the consumption on the island of a 

 large proportion of what they could produce, they are but 

 four or five hours from Boston, and arrangements could of 

 course be made for a cheap and quick transportation of their 

 summer crops. 



There are some summer vegetables which it would seem 

 might bo most fitly raised here, to be placed in the Boston 

 markets soon after the Norfolk and Long Island productions, 



