: 
: 
3 
I 
Agricultural Chaniatry. 421 
Other researches led to the discovery that bicarbonate of potash is 
scarcely more retained by normal than by plastered soils. 
Wote.—We venture to assert = the action mites gypsum 6 the soil 
og from some of ue sear a whi am may occur in the soil. He 
found that sulphate of lime kept in moist contact with powdered php 
e 
mixture was then treated with its own weight of water and oe 
filtered. In the first solution were found 0-125 grm. and in the second 
solution 0°175 grm. of alkali-chlorids. In another eo 100 gprs 
basalt-powder were boiled 9 hours in 300 ¢.c. water with 10 grms. gyp- 
sum. In the filtered were found 0° 337 | grm. alkali- chlorids—Jour: 
fir Prakt. Chem., \xxiv, 129, 47. 
The mode in which gypsum acts in ae potash doubtless belongs 
to that class of substitutive gests which first dis- 
tinctly brought to notice. The writer, in an actidle on “Some oints of 
Agricultural Science” (this Jour., July, 1859, pp. 71-85), gave a notice 
of the researches of Way and Eichhorn, and adduced other instances of 
similar actions. Wolff found that the ashes of buckwheat-straw which 
was raised on a soil manured with common salt contained less chlorid of 
sodium and more chlorid of potassium than ashes grown on the same 
soil without this addition, a displacement of potash by the soda eet 
i i i imil 
- dg. Soc. ’ 
a thorough study of the absorbent power of soils. From these and other 
facts ane in the paper referred to, the writer concluded as follows: 
“ However complicated and obscure these reactions may be, it is plain, 
that, henceforth, ¢he effect of a solution of one base in displacing othe 
A 4 
cer, al ibed, 
indicate —- —_ neral mode = which fertilizers, especially soluble 
saline indirectly. The investigations referred to 
show that the ee (and acids?) may replace each other in insoluble or 
slightly soluble combinations, é. e., soluble lime may displace insoluble 
, making this soluble and becoming insoluble itself. Soda may, 
in the same manner. , displace lime or potash, or ammonia, the rule being 
