PROCEEDINGS OF THE FARMERS' CLUB. 455 



bear the same name as an article from Nova Scotia; but the 

 analogy between the two substances is no greater than between 

 a horse chestnut and a chestnut horse. 



From the time of William III. to George III., in England, 

 common salt bore so high a reputation among the farmers that 

 nobody thought of farming without it, though we hear but little 

 of it. They passed laws Avhich still exist that no turnpike in 

 England should be permitted to charge toll upon salt carried as 

 manure. At one time they paid as high as a guinea and a half 

 for salt for agricultural purposes. I paid at first four cents per 

 bushel for refuse salt, and probably applied the first bushel ever 

 used as a fertilizer in my neighborhood. The value of salt is 

 very great. But keep it away from cherry trees, as it will change 

 the flavor of the cherries the first year, and the next year the 

 fruit will fail. Salt should be applied as a top-dressing. The 

 dew will carry it down as a saturated solution, strong enough to 

 destroy many insects and a very large class of weeds, while it 

 will pass over every particle of the soil. Beside the value of 

 salt as a manure, it has great hygrometric power ; and it will 

 travel by capillary attraction for some distance. I have top- 

 dressed a strip of land with salt, which had been dressed with 

 lime, and the next year have seen many head of cattle standing 

 in a row over that place, not on account of the salt, but for the 

 better feed which grew there. 



Charcoal is erroneously supposed by many to be a manure. It 

 is not soluble, and plants cannot feed upon it. But it has very 

 peculiar powers in the soil, both chemical and mechanical. 

 Mechanically it holds the soil open and accessible to gases. It 

 darkens the soil, thus enabling it to benefit more from the sun's 

 heat. The only reason that garden soil becomes so dark is that 

 an immense amount of organic matter is left there in the form of 

 carbon, as the result of decay. A single shovelful of manure 

 will do more duty where the soil is black, than a bushel in the 

 field near it. Earth from the woods contains much carbon, and 

 gardeners and those having green-houses which are well supplied 

 with woods earth will pay high prices for stable manure,, because 

 of its power to be continually active. Carbon and alumina are 

 the two elements in the soil that have prevented all that now 

 forms the verdure upon the earth's surface from passing to the 



