Salty as a Manure. 83 



I have chosen this form of showing the results, as the most 

 concise I could adopt, for bringing at once under the eye the 

 whole of the process. All the crops, with the exception of 

 the onions, were sown in drills, and thinned and cleaned in the 

 ordinary way. In addition to the above I tried salt as a 

 top-dressing to turnips, immediately after sowing; the first 

 shower which followed dissolved the salt, the sunshine formed 

 it into a crust, about the thickness of a shilling, and the 

 plants either never came up, or immediately died away. * The 

 foregoing experiments will also in some measure show the 

 different proportions which one crop bears to another in 

 point of weight, as the same quantity of land was sown with 

 each article. Mangold wurtzel will be seen to be the heaviest 

 crop ; and, as it has never been sown to any extent in this 

 country, farmers should take it into their immediate consider- 

 ation : cattle are extremely fond of it, and, in some cases, will 

 eat it in preference to turnips. Pigs eat it greedily, and seem 

 to prefer it to every other sort of raw food, except carrots. The 

 tops were cut for the cows twice in the course of the summer, 

 and the plants seemed the better for it. One fault it certainly 

 has, namely, a tendency to run to seed ; but this might be 

 obviated by thinning partially when very young, and leaving 

 plenty of plants to spare at the second and final thinning, and 

 at the same time taking care not to sow too early. Salt seems 

 to agree with it better than with any of the other crops above- 

 mentioned, and scarcely any difference could be observed on the 

 crop, when growing between the compartments manured with 

 salt and that manured with dung, and, when actually weighed, 

 the difference was trifling, and rather in favour of salt. From 

 the above statement, you will observe that the crops in 



* This will serve as an answer to the query of Umbratiis {Gard. 

 Mag., Vol. III. p. 121.); but if Umbratus will look into Dickson's Hus- 

 bandry of the Ancierds, vol. ii. p. 258., he will find a quotation from 

 Columella, directing that " turnip seeds be mixed up, the day before sow- 

 ing, with soot, and sprinkled with water;" at p. 261. another from Pal- 

 ladius, to nearly the same purpose; and one from Pliny, stating, that 

 the husbandman, while sowing turnips, " prayed that they might grow for 

 themselves and neighbours ;" and, moreover, " that the sower was naked." 

 Both Columella and Palladius affirm that the recipe effectually prevents 

 the destructive havoc of the turnip-fly (or fleas, as Urnbratus terms them), 

 and the thing seems plausible enough. The story of the " naked sower" 

 puzzled me extremely, till after reading the query of Umbratus, in which 

 he terms the little animals "fleas;" might it not be for the purpose of 

 preventing the noxious vermin from lodging in his clothes ? And, although 

 Pliny does not tell us so, it is probable that the sower, when his work was 

 finished, went to the nearest pool, and, having, like Allan Ramsay's tod 

 (fox), and for the same purpose, performed an ablution, marched to his 

 domicile, and resumed his habiliments. 



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