4 On the Employment of Halt as a Manure. 



If you consider the above would at all tend to call the 

 attention of gardeners to that which I am convinced is one of 

 their best friends, if inserted in your Magazine, (the best de- 

 monstration of my approval of which is my constant perusal 

 of it as it appears,) I shall be very happy at a future period 

 to communicate such facts, &c. as may occur. 



I am, Sir, &c. 



G. W. Johnson. 

 Great Totham, Essex, 

 Sept. 15. 1826. 



The following is a subsequent communication from Mr. 

 Johnson on the same subject. We are sorry that he should 

 imagine, that because we consider salt as a stimulus, we are 

 therefore unfavourable to its use in agriculture or gardening. 

 If this conclusion were to be drawn, we should be also un- 

 favourable to the use of lime, which, in common with agricul- 

 tural chemists, we consider more as a stimulant, and decom- 

 poser of food already in the soil than as food itself. We are 

 not, however, on that account, the less an advocate for the 

 employment both of salt and lime. See Encyc. of Agr. § 2213. 

 et seq. — Cond. 



Sir, 



I regret most sincerely to find, by the observation con- 

 tained in p. 402. of the last number of the Gardener's Maga- 

 zine, that you are far from being favourably inclined to the 

 employment of salt as a fertilizing medium. I am almost in- 

 clined to agree with you in considering salt as beneficial to 

 plants by stimulating them, and other proximate effects, rather 

 than as being their actual food, but there are some consider- 

 ations and facts, which being opposed to it, I am unable satis- 

 factorily to explain away. Water, wherever it is obtained, is 

 always found to contain common salt, even rain and distilled 

 water are not perfectly free from it ; such waters as are derived 

 from near the surface of the earth always contain the most. 

 Now, as such water is one of the chief sources of nourishment 

 to plants, are we not justified in concluding that the salt is 

 taken up with the water ? — At all events, many upland plants, 

 as the Gratiola officinalis, Mesembryanthemum crystallinum, 

 &c. (Thomson's Chem. ed. 6th. v. 4. p. 244, 245.), contain 

 it in a very notable proportion. Mr. G. Sinclair states 

 from experiment, that wheat grown upon a soil salted, 

 indicated, on analysis, nearly double the quantity of alka- 

 line muriate than similar grain grown upon a similar 



