164. On Salt as a Manure. 



oardening in various and remote parts of Great Britain and 

 Ireland ; so if I can give no account of my practice, or not 

 write a letter, or even a book, fit to be read, it must be entirely 

 owing to my want of brains, or, rather, the proper bumps on 

 my cranium. 



Well, Sir, your first article for this year being on the em- 

 ployment of salt as a manure, by Mr. G. W. Johnson, I see 

 you have invited several gardeners to try experiments with 

 salt, and give you the results for next year ; but as I think 

 " delays are dangerous," I shall forestall or monopolize the 

 whole business to myself, and tell you at once, that salt is not 

 a manure at all, any more than it is human food, or animal 

 food, which it positively is not. Yet, that some lands and 

 some crops are really benefited by the application of salt, is 

 equally certain ; so are some constitutions benefited by taking 

 physic : but will any one say from this, that Epsom Salts, 

 Glauber Salts, Saltpetre, &c. possess such and such a quantity 

 of food ? or that sea water will fatten hogs better than fresh 

 water? I have seen tried, and tried myself, innumerable 

 experiments with salt; so have many others, particularly Mr. 



S , of New Cross, which he has kindly made public in 



the Farmer's Journal, and otherwise : most of which experi- 

 ments I have proved to be correct, though some people affect 

 to sneer at both him and his experiments. Even in the 

 Number of the Farmer's Journal for the 8th of this month, 

 the writer of a letter dated from Halfmoon Street, (which let- 

 ter I pronounce little better than half-moonshine,) prefers the 

 old-fashioned spud for extirpating thistles, and hints that 

 thistle seed will vegetate on the salted ground, and not on that 

 which was spudded. This seems very odd ; and Mr. G. W. 

 Johnson seems to be of a similar opinion when he says, that 

 weeds grow more luxuriously on walks after having been killed 

 by salt. I have often heard the same thing said of spudding 

 thistles, or killing vermin, &c. ; " kill one, and ten comes to 

 the funeral." 



I shall conclude this letter with two anecdotes of experiments 

 with salt. A few months ago I saw a fallow field, which had 

 been much neglected ; it seemed little else than a bed of 

 thistles, about a foot high. It was sown with salt, about 

 twenty-five bushels per acre, which cost at the salt-works ] Os. : 

 they do not measure it nor weigh it, but you may fill a three- 

 horse cart for 105. In a few days the soil assumed a different 

 colour from any of the surrounding fields, and every thistle 

 was as dead as if it had been scalded with boiling water. A 

 little labour soon made the field into a pretty good fallow ; and 

 the wheat on it now looks as well as most in the neighbour- 



