City Manures—letter from Mr. Hendrickson.—'Technical and Scientific Words. 
314 
gardeners, to place some of the empyreumatic tar, col¬ 
lected in making gas, and of that produced in distilling 
pyroligeniqus acid, into a compost heap, adding to it 
charcoal and quick-lime, and try its fertilizing powers. 
I shall proceed to call your attention to the coal 
ashes, and the soot, now thrown away in our cities. 
There can be no farmer so ignorant as not to know 
that soot is an exceedingly valuable fertilizer. To my 
knowledge it has been collected in England, and sold 
to the farmer for more than sixty years. One hundred 
weight of it is considered equivalent to a single cart 
load of barn-yard manure ; yet our Long Island farm¬ 
ers have permitted the immense quantity supplied by 
sweepers in New-York and Brooklyn to be thrown 
away. Now supposing we have seventy-five thousand 
chimnies in New-York and Brooklyn, each chimney 
swept twice a year, and each sweeping to afford twenty 
pounds of soot, there will then be thrown away fifteen 
hundred tons of soot per annum. This would be am¬ 
ply sufficient to enrich annually three thousand acres 
of land. 
Soot, by analysis of Braconnet, is found to contain 
fourteen distinct materials, all of them good fertilizers. 
Rather more than thirty per cent, is similar to a mate¬ 
rial made from sawdust and potash ; about twenty per 
cent, is animalised matter, soluble in water; fourteen 
per cent, is carbonate lime ; more than ten per cent, is 
acetate and sulphate of lime, and about five .per cent, 
acetate of potash. 
Our farmers will perceive, from the above analysis, 
that every one hundred pounds of soot contains more 
than seventeen pounds of potash, or more than three 
hundred and forty pounds in every ton. Thus we 
prove, that if all the soot thrown away in New-York 
and Brooklyn could be applied to our Long Island 
farms, they” would obtain a supply of potash alone 
equal to five hundred and ten thousand pounds an¬ 
nually, equivalent to twelve hundred barrels, and this 
only equal to one-third of the fertiliziag properties of 
soot!! Let me ask our intelligent farmers if they will 
continue to permit so valuable a material to be thrown 
away ? 
The ashes of coal is a valuable material for pasture 
land, more particularly when the sod lies on clay, or 
when it becomes mossy. In applying ashes to such 
land I have seen it produce surprising effects; but I 
have never had any experience of its application to 
arable land. I should consider, however, a priori , 
that it could not fail to be highly beneficial to heavy 
soils. Wm. Partridge. 
Mr. R. H. Hendrickson, of Middletown, 
Ohio, writes us under date of 25th Novem¬ 
ber, 1842: 
9 s I will give you some idea as to the crops of corn 
in the Miami Valley, from Dayton to Cincinnati. It 
will average 65 bushels per acre, which is from 15 to 
20 bushels more than the average crop for the last five 
years. I have about half finished gathering my corn, 
and it has yielded from 85 to i 00 bushels per acre. I 
shall send you some seed corn in the spring.” 
We shall be happy to receive it and make 
a gratituitous distribution among our friends. 
Mr. Hendrickson has taken much pains to 
perfect the seed of his corn, and we know 
from personal inspection of it on his farm 
last year, that it is very superior. It should 
not be planted, however, above 40° of north 
latitude, and on a rich soil. It is of the 
gourd seed variety, the ears large and the 
cob small, in proportion to the length of the 
grain. That it is a great producer it will be 
seen by the average which Mr. Hendrickson 
gives of his crop, and this is not a very un¬ 
common yield with him. For seed at home, 
like Gen. Harmon of this state, with his seed 
wheat, he asks but a moderate advance on 
the market price of common corn. 
Technical and Scientific Words. 
We don’t know but the letter below of 
Mr. Meadows is a fair hit enough, and have 
concluded to publish it. For ourselves, we 
shall endeavor hereafter, in selecting our 
phrases, to go oftener to the pure well of 
Saxon, rather than to the muddy waters of 
Latin English. Still, we assure our readers, 
that it is quite impossible, without much cir¬ 
cumlocution, and not even then, to express 
certain ideas without the use of scientific 
and technical terms. And let the plain farmer 
consider one moment, and he will find that 
no profession abounds with more technicali¬ 
ties than his own, plain and familiar as they 
may appear to him; a matter which we could 
easily illustrate, but our correspondent has 
done it so well, with his best and most use¬ 
ful instrument, the plow, that we forbear. 
We repeat the suggestion to our farmers, 
and beg them to consider, and above all to 
act upon it. 
There is no neighborhood that does not 
possess more or less well-informed, if not 
scientific men. If all then would form them¬ 
selves into a club, to meet one evening a 
week throughout the winter ; what with a 
few books and periodicals, and mutual ques¬ 
tion and answer, they would soon be as wise 
in the points and physiology of cattle ; and 
the chemistry, geology, and botany of agri¬ 
culture, as their boys now are of the differ¬ 
ent names of the different parts of the plow, 
and the action and management of the team 
that draws it. It requires no more effort to 
learn the one than the other, and the day is 
fast coming, when that man who remains 
behind the useful knowledge and improve¬ 
ments of the age, will be farming it at a sad 
loss. 
As our correspondent dates from the clas¬ 
sic local of Sleepy Hollow, we hope he may 
find some Ichabod Crane to enlighten all who 
wish to learn in the school of agricultural 
science; and if he does, we covenant to se¬ 
cure him against the graceless Brom Bones 
of that region, and promise him some fair 
Katrine’s hand for his pains; together with 
