PROCEEDINGS OF THE FARMERS' CLUB. 449 



Mr. Carpenter. — A gentleman states that he salted his land at 

 the rate of six bushels to the acre, for a carrot crop, and it 

 entirely destroyed his carrots. He then put it into ruta bagas 

 without additional salt, and it entirely destroyed them. Is ha 

 right in his supposition that it was the salt which destroyed 

 them ? 



Prof. Mapes. — He is not. 



Mr. Fuller. — I have tried six times that quantity for grapes. 

 I have tried salt to kill weeds in paths, and it killed them for 

 about three weeks, but afterward, in the same season, everything 

 seemed to grow the better for it. 



Mr. Bergen. — Can spots overflowed by the sea be restored so 

 as to be used the same season? 



Prof. Mapes. — A slight top-dressing of lime will do it. As to 

 applying salt, Avhere lime exists in the soil, the amount required 

 will bear no ratio to the amount required for a. soil destitute of 

 lime. Mr. Fuller's land probably had lime in it. 



Mr. Fuller. — I have no doubt it had. 



Prof. Mapes. — If there was enough lime, 60 bushels or 600 

 bushels might not check vegetation for a single month. In my 

 garden paths, where there is little or no lime, the weeds are 

 eradicated by salt, and for less money than would be required by 

 any other method. 



LIQUID MANURES. 



Prof. Mapes. — When the manure heap is arranged as described 

 in my last lecture, with a cistern at the lower end, supplied with 

 a pump, so that the drainage of the heap, the wash from the 

 house and stables, and a sufficient quantity of rain water, may 

 pass into the cistern, and by a windmill or other means, may be 

 continually thrown back upon the heap until the whole becomes 

 homogeneous in its character, there will be nothing lost, and the 

 decomposition will be twenty times as rapid as under other cir- 

 cumstances. If this fluid can be distributed over your fields by 

 sprinkling carts, or can be carried economically by leaders to 

 shower difierent parts of your farm, it will be found to be indis- 

 putably the best mode of applying manure. But these condi- 

 tions do not often exist. A great many meadows, by the use of 

 town sewerage, have yielded five tons of grass where previously 

 they produced but one ; and the rental has been raised from 2s. 

 6d. to 40 shillings sterling. Yet the town sewerage is not so 



[Am. Inst.] CC 



