38 ON MANURES, &C. 



The dark colored brown solution contains about half 

 an ounce per gallon of vegetable matter. It is to 

 be applied by watering grain crops, grass lands, or 

 any other way the farmer's quick wit will point out." 



In the month of June I prepared a solution of 

 geine, obtained not by boiling, but by steeping the 

 mud as taken from the meadow, in a weak lye in 

 tubs. I did not weigh the materials, being careful 

 only to use no more mud than the potash would render 

 soluble. The proportion was something like this: 

 peat 100 lbs., potash 166 lbs., water 50 gallons ; stir- 

 red occasionally for about a week, when the dark 

 brown solution, described by Dr. Dana, was dipped 

 off and applied to some rows of corn, a portion of a 

 piece of starved barley, and a bed of onions sown on 

 land not well prepared for that crop. The corn was 

 a portion of the piece manured as above mentioned. 

 On this the benefit was not so obvious. The crop 

 of barley on the portion watered was more than 

 double the quantity both in straw and grain to that 

 on other portions of field, the soil and treatment of 

 which was otherwise precisely similar. 



The bed of onions which had been prepared by 

 dressing it with a mixture of mud and ashes previous 

 to the sowing of the seed, but which had not by har- 

 rowing been so completely pulverized, mixed and 

 kneaded with the soil as the cultivators of this crop 

 deem essential to success, consisted of three and a 

 half square rods. The onions came up well, were 

 well weeded, and about two bushels of fresh horse 

 manure spread between the rows. In June four 

 rows were first watered with the solution of geine 



