1840.] SENATE— No. 36. 185 



The produce was three hundred bushels of ears of sound corn, two 

 tons of pumpkins and squashes, and some potatoes and beans. Dr. 

 Dana, in his letter to Mr. Colman, dated Lowell, March G, 1839, sug- 

 gests the trial of a solution of geine as a manure. His directions for 

 preparing it are as follows: " Boil one hundred pounds of dry, pulver- 

 ized peat with two and a half pounds of white ash, (an article im- 

 ported from England,) containing 36 to 55 per cent, of pure soda, or 

 its equivalent in pearlash or potash, in a potash kettle, with 130 gal- 

 lons of water; boil for a few hours, let it settle, and dip off the clear 

 liquor for use. Add the same quantity of alkali and water, boil and 

 dip off as before. 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 more mud than the potash would render soluble. The proportion 

 was something like this: peat IOC lbs., potash 1 lb., water 50 gallons ; 

 stirred 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 por- 

 tions of the field, the soil and treatment of which was otherwise pre- 

 cisely 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 harrowing 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 ma- 

 nure spread between the rows. In June, four rows were first watered 

 with the solution of geine above described. In ten days, the onions 

 in these rows were nearly double the size of the others. All but six 

 rows of the remainder were then watered. The growth of these soon 

 outstripped the unvvatered remainder. 



Mr. Henry L. Gould, who manages my farm, and who conducted all 

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