AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 375 



Solon Robinson reminded the Club that the doctrine of leachins 

 down has been perfectly and finally exploded by Prof. Mapes and 

 some other intelligent observers and practical men. No organic 

 manure can go down through Long Island soil. I have observed 

 that the roads through that land have been drained of what clay 

 there was among the pebbles, so that the road does not exhibit 

 the true character of the soil on both sides of it, I call the soil 

 a gravelly loam. A considerable part of Jersey is no less sandy 

 than Long Island, but thanks to her green sand marl she can en- 

 rich her lands with that. And allow me to say, from my full 

 experience on the rich soils of the far west, I prefer the Long 

 Island lands to them. Now such paradoxes need explanation 

 and justification. Sir, the wheat straw of the far west is a per- 

 fect burthen — heavy to handle, worse than useless. Sir, I have 

 lent my team and wagon to my neighbors to carry it away. The 

 land is m itself manure. Ten bushels of wheat is a fair crop 

 from much of that excessive growth of straw, and ten per cent of 

 that is often lost by their careless method of thrashing it out 

 upon the ground. If the western land could show its richness in 

 wheat rather than in straw, you would see, sir, one hund/>-ori nnd 

 fifty bushels of it on one acre. 



Tlie Chairman recalled the subject of the frozen potato, and 

 desired to remove a prejudice as to them. When the potatoes 

 are frozen care must be used in regard to them; keep them steadily 

 frozen until wanted for use, then let the water in the kettle boil, 

 and carefully, gently put in one frozen potato at a time, so that 

 the water cannot be chilled at any moment so much as to stop 

 boiling. Then your potatoes will prove to be as good as if they 

 had not been frozen at all. 



Solon Robinson — Just so, if the frozen potatoes are put into 

 cold water, the frost comes out of them and forms a crust of ice 

 all over them; and after that they can be cooked as fresh pota- 

 toes are, and just as good as if they had not been frozen. 



Mr. Pardee was requested to speak of his experience in the 

 preservation of fruit. He said that the plan of preserving apples 

 whole has been abundantly talked of, but he thought the recent 

 plan of paring and quartering them, then boiling them in sweet 

 cider until the whole became a perfect pulp, then nicely put up 

 in new wooden tubs of two or three gallons each; such sell now 

 for about thirty-seven cents a gallon. One lady out west worked 

 at apple butter (that's what we call it), so that (as she said) she 

 kept her old man in liariiess Cher liusband in clotlies) and set out 



