164 APPENDIX. 



I have nearly finished the analysis of Adams' soil. I will send it to 

 you next week, together with the composition of the substance used by 

 Webster, in Dracut. 



With great respect, 



I am very truly yours, 



SAMUEL L. DANA. 

 Rev. H. CoL!\iAN, Boston. 



LETTER II. 



Lowell, March 4, 1S39. 



Dear Sir — I omitted an answer to one of your questions, in my let- 

 ter of last week. I know of no particular affinity between plaster, or 

 ashes, and lohitc clover. The same crop follows a free use of bone- 

 manure. This effect is due in all cases to a peculiar development of 

 geine. This substance is probably, like many other hydro-carbon 

 compounds, an unstable chemical combination, capable of existing in 

 several definite portions of oxygene, hydrogene and carbon. Now 

 each of these may develope the germination of particular seeds. We 

 know that "Jnngi," always germinate best in decaying wood. Al- 

 ways we find crops o^ ''fungi," about the decaying stumps of trees. 

 I have noticed that the mops, which have been used for swabbing out 

 vessels, in which cloth has been dyed with madder, when thrown aside 

 in a moist, steamy room, often become covered with beautiful yw??^?. 

 I had occasion last fall, to make a decoction of a large quantity of En- 

 glish Hay. (It affords a permanent yellow, with alumina.) This de- 

 coction was made with a portion of alkali, and several times repeated. 

 The hay was then thrown aside in a pile out of doors. In a kw days, 

 it was filled in all parts with jiaigi, whose stems and roots were often a 

 foot long, mounting up through the pile, and raising tlie upper layer 

 of hay in large fork-fulls. Now, both here and in the madder, the seed 

 existed in the vegetable fibre. Its vegetating power was not destroyed 

 even by long boiling. It required only a jjarticular developincnt of 

 geinc, to stimulate the germinative jwioer of the fungus seed. The ex- 

 posed boiled hay rapidly developed this peculiar state. Probably the 

 seed, of each class of plants, requires a peculiar development of geine. 

 Let us understand, if we can, in what this consists, on what it depends. 

 It may be a state always under our control. If we can always, and at 



