264 
THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 
[Oct. I, 1897 . 
quantities as a preventative of mildew. The ex- 
periments of the Bev. E. Cartwright strongly evidence 
that when salt and water are sprinkled with a brush 
upon diseased plants it acts as a complete cure. 
It appeared in the course of some enquiries made 
by the Board of Agriculture that a Cornish farmer, 
Mr. Sickler, and the Bev. B. Hoblin, were accus- 
tomed to employ refuse salt as a manure and that 
their crops were never affected with /lust or blight. 
Salt is also a complete preventive of the ravages of 
the weevil, and other insect vermin, which attack the 
corn in granaries. It has been successfully em- 
ployed in the proportion of a pint of salt to a 
barrel of wheat. An American corn merchant states 
that wheat placed in old salt barrels is never at- 
tacked by those destructive vermin. Query — might 
not salt, sprinkled in water upon the trees or existing 
as an element of food for the roots of the coffee 
plants, be an effective agent in removal of the 
aphides, known as the black and white bugs of 
Ceylon. 
Salt has of late years been used in Great Britain 
at the rate of from 20 to 40 bushels per acre to 
kill weeds, if the cultivator can collect weeds, 
parings of turf, cleanings of dams, roads, &c., 
and spread on the surface of the heap half a 
bushel of salt to every ton of the collection, he will 
find every weed killed, and dissolved away in the 
course of a few weeks. Query. — Would not saff in 
the above proportion sprinkled upon the litter ro n 
the patanas, spread for cattle bedding, operate a niui e 
rapid dissolution and preparation of made compost, 
than would take place without it ? 
The light soils appear decidedly the most bene- 
fitted by arr application of salt as a fertilizer. For 
such soils it is found that salt is much nrore valu- 
able if mixed with lime and laid in a damp place, 
as a cellar or shed, some weeks before it is spread 
on the land, as it, by this means, suffers a partial 
decomposition and the mass of salt and lime becomes 
partially mixed with a considerable proportion of 
chloride of lime and soda, both deliquescent and 
consequently moisture absorbing salts. It is by 
each a process in fact that commorr salt is deconr- 
osed in France by the Soda manufacturers. On 
eavy lands the use of salt has never been so 
strikingly advantageous as upou the lighter, more 
thirsty, upland soils, and that may be accounted 
for by the more absorbent powers of common salt 
on such lauds being less needed. The mixture of 
salt with other well known fertilizers is a question 
well worthy of 'ilaa agriculturist’s attention. And 
chiefly with reference to the decornpositioir which 
occurs when it is mixed with lime, or when used as 
a compost with weeds, mud, vegetable refuse, &c., anp 
to the extraordinary effects when mixed with soot as a 
manure for wheat. 
The use of salt as a manure since the repeal of 
the duties in England has been considerable : its 
high price stood chiefly in the way of its use from 
the time of William III. In 1801 expeii rents were 
entered upon which proved that out of 25 manures, 
salt and lime were found superior to 19 others 
(com. Board. Agri. Vol. 4) and in 1816 Mr. J. Man- 
ley of Cheshire before a committee of the House of 
Commons stated that he increased his produce 5 
bushels per acre bj^ dressing with salted marl. 
A mixture of salt and lime was recommended so 
long ago as the IGth century. The 'celebrated Ger- 
man Chemist Glauber, described at some length 
the mode of preparirrg it, and characterized the 
compound of soda and muriate of lime produced, 
as “ most fit for dunging lauds, and to ! c used 
instead of the common beasts’ dung.” Cnristopher 
Packe, in 1688 piublishing Glauber’s works, enforces 
the value of this fertilizing compound with much 
earnestuees, and describes it in his preface as the 
cheapest of all mixtures for the enriching of poor and 
barren land." 
From the Farmer’s guide, published in 1768 we 
read " now I come to treat of the mother of all 
manures, viz. Salt. — Take 0 bushels salt, 6 bushels 
lime, 6 of dry ashes, and mix them all together. 
This is sufficient for an English acre.” In Sin- 
clair’s Husbandry of Scotland we are told to slake 
32 bushels of lime with boiled salt water, made 
into a compost with 40 loads of earth it will be 
sufficient for an acie. The component parts of the 
mixture will be muriate and sulphate of lime, mineral 
alkali in an uncombined state, and also muriat and 
carbonate of soda. 
The mixture of salt and lime is recommended in 
the proportion of 2 of lime to one of salt, the 
mixture to remain incorporated in a shady pi ace or 
covered with soil, for two or three months, by this 
proces.s a gradual decomposition takes place — muriate 
of lime, and soda, are formed— and the whole mass 
speedily becomes encrusted with alkali. There is 
another advantage from this process besides the 
formation of soda. The muriate of lime is one of 
the most deliquescent, or moisture absorbing sub- 
stances with which we are acquainted, and in conse- 
quence, whenever it exists in a soil, the warmth and 
force of the sun has much less injurious influence on it 
than it otherwise would have. 
Mr. Kimberly, a piraclical farmer of .500 acres at 
Trotsworth near Egham, says “ salt improves the 
condition of all kinds of stock and increase the 
durability and value of their manure. With reference 
to the applicability of marine salt for my liquid 
manure I have no hesitation in stating that ic is 
one cf the most valuable ingredients of its basis, 
and a material which every farmer should have in 
his possession as one of the most important means 
of supplying himself with manure at all times— and 
thereioie any' measure ihat will cheapen, and facilitate 
the introduction of salt into the agricultural districts, 
will cause an incalculable benefit upou the landed 
interest. I consider salt one of the most essential of our 
artificial manures.” 
Salt has never been employed with other substances 
so extensively as it migh', with soot (the chief 
constituent of which is sulphate of ammonia, a 
deliquescent salt) it produces the most remarkable 
effects, klr. G. Sinclairfound that when unmanured 
soil gave 23 tons of carrots per acre, the same soil 
fertilized with a mixture of only 6h bushels of salt 
and 6 i cf soot, yielded 40 tons per acre. Mr. Belfield 
describes the mixture as equally beneficial for wheat 
(a. (/lute ii cere'll) and Mr. Cartwright found that when 
the scil without any addition yielded per acre 175 
bushels potaioes (.a starch plant — IHce being a starch 
cereal) that dressing the same land with a mixture 
of 30 bushels of soot and 8 bushels of salt the 
produce per acre was 200 (Com. Board Acri 
v.d. IV.) ^ 
Salt may be easily separable from lime if the 
mixture be subjected to suiiable process be'ore 
decompofitiou takes place, but not so after new 
chemical combinations have taken place in both 
materials.— Mixing salt with coal tar would probably 
thoroughly pollute the salt so as to render it utterly 
unfit for use as an ingredient in animal food, 
while coal car, either alone, or in combination with 
salt, is rich in fertilizing bases, when these have 
been rendered soluble by decomposition. For all 
vegetable productions which arc affected favorably 
by the nitrates, ccal tar i.s suitable as a manure. It 
is cemposed entirely of substances which enter into 
the composition of all pirn's, is gradually decomposed 
in the soil and is powerful in its effects from con- 
taining a considerable proportion of the carbonate 
aceta'e of ammonia. 
Coal tar and lime, however, ought notto be mixed 
in view of applica'Ton as a manure to land because 
the tar uniting with the bmc forms into a hard 
cement in which state, even if wiih considerable 
labour it were broken into small particles, it can 
be of but little service to any soil. 
An overdose of .salt to land kills vogetatiou. If a 
soil contain naturally sufficient chlorine and soda, 
in any state of combination, not only w'ould salt be 
unnecessary as an ingredient of manure, butitmi^ht 
be deleterious. It is said that the soil of the in.enor 
of Ceylon is rich in the muriates, but this is not 
borne out by the straitened development and small 
