THE CULTIVATOR. 
243 
remain some two ounces of ash. If we test this for 
phosphoric acid, it will yield, according- to Boussingault, 
47 per cent, of that substance. To make an acre of 
wheat plants sufficient to yield 20 bushels of grain, the 
seed must have 12 lbs., and the straw 5± lbs. of phospho¬ 
ric acid. A good crop of timo'hy will require only one 
third as much phosphorous. If the bone earth, (phos¬ 
phate of lime)—which enters into the organization of two 
acres of grass, were added to an acre that already had 
one third enough to give a good crop of wheat, undoubt¬ 
edly such a crop could be grown. Pure carbonate or 
caustic lime will not answer to form bones. And as the 
skeletons or bones of corals and shell fish do not abound 
in the shale and freestone rocks, which live south, and 
above the limestone strata in this state, we see why the 
soil in the southern tier of counties will yield an abun¬ 
dance of such plants and seeds as require but little bone 
earth, while such as need, like kernels of wheat, 47 per¬ 
cent of phosphoric acid to combine with their alkaline 
minerals, can not flourish. Lime, potash, sulphur and 
ammonia, are very useful, nay, indispensable to the pro¬ 
duction of wheat, as well as corn, oats, grass, and pota¬ 
toes; but they are all alike valueless and unavailing if 
the soil contain no phosphorous. Those lime and shale 
rocks that most abound in organic remains are richest in 
phosphates. Hence, in selecting lime stone to be 
burnt for agricultural purposes, such as contains most co¬ 
rals and shells should be preferred. All the salts which en¬ 
ter the mouths of our domestic animals should be saved as 
they escape from their bodies. The supply of these 
minerals, wilhout which we could raise no food for 
man or his cattle, is not inexhaustible. Give me a 
plenty of bones, potash, common salt, and plaster of 
Paris, and I will find sand, clay, iron, nitrogen, and car¬ 
bon enough in any soil in the state to grow good crops 
of any plant adapted to the climate. 
More than one half of the ash of potatoes is pure pot¬ 
ash. Acting on this hint, I have found in my tour scien¬ 
tific farmers, who by the use of unbleached ashes, lime 
and plaster mixed in equal parts and placed in the hill 
with the seed, and on the hill as soon as have 
wholly escaped the pototoe rot, and harvested for seve¬ 
ral years, from 500 to 690 bushels per acre. 
In transforming carbon and water into starch, not 
only in potatoes, but in the seeds of all cultiveted plants, 
potash plays an important part. In changing vegetable 
acids in unripe fruits, like green grapes, cherries, and 
apples, into grape, and cane sugar, the agency of this al¬ 
kali is no less controlling. A sugar maple, a grape 
vine, an apple tree, and a potatoejilant need a soil that 
abounds in potash. Take from your fields 200 bushels 
of potatoes this fall, and you will remove from it sixty 
three pounds of this mineral. One bushel of ashes, by 
those that have used them, are said to make ten extra 
bushels of potatoes. 
I am happy to see a growing interest every where 
taken, by plain, working farmers in the science of their 
noble profession. They fully comprehend that it takes 
many things to form a single blade of grass; and that 
these things must exist somewhere. To be able to lay 
one’s hand on to every substance that makes grass, grain, 
tubers, roots, milk, butter, cheese, wool, flesh, fat, and 
bone; and to know how to combine these subsiances in 
the best possible manner to accomplish the great pur¬ 
pose of the husbandman, are advantages of the highest 
importance to all practical farmers. The idea of crea¬ 
ting potatoes, bread, or meat, out of nothing, by dint 
of blind, hard work, will soon give place to better no ¬ 
tions of cause and effect. The light of modern science, 
which reveals the unerring laws of Nature, will soon 
force its way into the common sense and common prac¬ 
tice of a large majority of New-York farmers. All ad¬ 
mit that the laws of matter, which transform crude earth, 
air and water, into human food and raiment, are not to 
be despised by any tiller of the soil. Many study these 
laws, and work according to their dictates. 
The frost has done much injury to timothy in this quar¬ 
ter, having killed acres so that it will not head out, nor 
yield anything but a light clip of mowing. Beech, and 
some other forest trees, have suffered pretty severely by 
the same blighting agent. There is no fruit except a 
few currants, that I have seen in the Chenango valley. 
This county gained only 17 in its population from 1835 
to 1840. To give a few large sheep and dairy farms, 
many have sold and emigrated to the new countries of the 
west. Not a little flour which has crossed lake Erie 
is consumed in this county. Some are trying to raise 
wheat by the use of lime. If they would add salt, plas¬ 
ter and ashes, their success would be more signal. 
Urine should be applied to furnish the soil what phos¬ 
phorus the lime and ashes might lack to make 30 bushels 
of wheat per acre. The plaster and urine ought to be 
applied together, and the salt, lime and ashes. Fifteen 
or twenty bushels of the latter compound would suffice 
for an acre, and three bushels of plaster. As a general 
rule a poor soil needs more than one, two, or three of 
the elements of plants, -which number fourteen. Plaster 
and common salt yield four of these elementary bodies, 
and yet they furnish the hungry crop with no potash, no 
silica, no iron, and no phosphorous, which must be had, 
to say nothing of carbon, nitrogen, alumina, and mag¬ 
nesia. D. Lee. 
THE PEACH A DISTINCT SPECIES. 
In George Bancroft's Address before our State Agricul¬ 
tural Society at Poughkeepsie, he asked, “ Whose efforts 
led the way in changing the rough skin of the almond to 
the luscious sweetness of the peach ?” 
It is not surprising that the orator should have acquired 
this idea in the course of his miscellaneous reading, 
when such men as the late Thomas Andrew Knight , Pre¬ 
sident of the Horticultural Society of London, was an 
advocate of this doctrine,—partly in consequence of some 
hybrid which he had produced between the peach and the 
almond, and partly because the peach is not mentioned in 
the Bible. He therefore concluded that the latter tree 
was only a variety of the former, and comparatively of 
modern origin. 
Since the publication of President Knight's opinion, 
however, it has become known that [“the peach] is found 
wild in different parts of the Himalayas ”*—the only coun¬ 
try in which it is known to be wild; and also that a dis¬ 
tinct kind—a new species—has been found in that re¬ 
gion. These facts appear in my view to explain the 
silence of the Scriptures on this subject,—the peach not 
having found its way into Persia, nor the Jews become 
acquainted with it when those books were written. 
The following arguments go to prove that the peach is 
a distinct species: 
“ Its solitary flowers constitute one of the most strik¬ 
ing traits of its specific character,! while those of the 
almond are in pairs. These traits are given by botanists 
as constant; and though the inflorescence differs not, ex- 
cept in number, —yet number when constant, is freely and 
unexceptionably admitted into specific characters in other 
genera. In Mitchella, Linncea, or Xylosteum no part of 
even the generic character is more unvarying than the 
geminate position of the flowers. 
“ A specific difference may also be shown from the 
numerous and multiform varieties into which the peach 
is annually spreading, when contrasted with the more 
permanent character of the almond. A case nearly par¬ 
allel may be found between Ribes rubrum (the common 
currant) and Ribes grossularia (the garden gooseberry). 
The former, like the almond, has not produced more 
than six or eight’well known varieties ;—while those of 
the latter, like the varieties of the peach, are too nume¬ 
rous to be recorded.” American Farmer, vol. 13, page 323. 
Another circumstance, which appears to have been 
strangely overlooked, is, that the shell of the almond 
splits open to discharge the nut, while the pulp of the 
peach has no determinate opening. This is not only 
sufficient of itself to show that they are different species, 
but also that they scarcely belong to the same family; and 
Persica has been proposed or adopted by Royle as the 
name of the new genus. David Thomas. 
Greatfield, Cayuga County, 7 mo. 8, 1845. 
* Royle's Illustrations of the Natural History of the Himaylayan 
Mountains, &c. 
t As given by botanists; but I consider the second argument not 
less conclusive than the first. 
