Proceedings of the Farmers' Club. 331 



coloring matter. Oxide of iron, or iron filings, or iron turnings fur- 

 nish the growing roots of flowers with the material for bring- 

 ing out all the colors of the rainbow. Go ask the artist if he can 

 bring out those colors of transcendant beauty without carmine or rose- 

 pink ? Iron will supply the necessary material for decking the petals 

 of lilies and other flowers with the rich colors and roseate beauty. 

 Pile on the iron filings, then, where the roots of growing flowers can 

 reach them 5 and instead of pale and faint hues, dame nature will 

 excell any of her former productions by arraying every petal in the 

 most gorgeous colors. Send a boy to the iron turner's lathe to get a 

 pail full of the turnings and filings which he casts into the street, and 

 scatter a handful or two, or even a small shovel full around each stool 

 of flowers, and dig them into the soil. In a few months the iron will 

 all be dissolved, filling the soil with just such coloring material as 

 the flowers must have in order to adorn the petals with such heavy 

 coats of silk and velvet as will feast the educated eye. Another 

 article of prime importance in. the production of beautiful flowers is 

 sand, or silica. Can a glass maker make glass of any kind without 

 sand ? Neither can dame nature develop plants without silicic acid 

 to do it. 



Yalue of Soap for Flowers. 

 Almost every family uses from one to three or four barrels of soap 

 annually. Besides the large proportion of oleaginous matter of which 

 the soap is composed, there is a large percentage of alkali, or potash, 

 which all intelligent cultivators know is a valuable material to 

 apply to the soil for the production of crops of any kind, either of 

 vegetables, fruit, grass, or grain. Every growing plant needs potash. 

 Consequently there is little danger of applying too much to any land. 

 There are about 300 pounds of soap in one barrel, and it 

 is worth more, pound for pound, than the choicest quality of Peru- 

 vian guano, to apply to flower beds, to growing potatoes, turnips, 

 grain, grass, or to any kind of fruit trees. J^ow, then, suppose Biddy, 

 or your bosom counselor, were to empty one or two barrels of soap 

 into the yard, or the street, or to chuck a hundred pounds of bar soap 

 into the sewer, she would be sharply reproved for such a prodigal 

 waste of the most valuable kind of fertilizing material. But, after a 

 barrel of soap has been dissolved in the washtub, its value, as 

 a fertilizer of the soil, is not depreciated in the least; 

 but rather increased. Therefore, if a barrel of soap be worth 



