1848. 
THE CULTIVATOR. 
manure; and 2d,, that after all that has been said about 
the importance of ammonia in manure, the crops are' 
as good where that principle is driven off, as where it 
is retained by fixing.” 
Prof. Nesbit, of or near London, gave a lecture be¬ 
fore an association of farmers at Trying, England, a 
year or two since; [reported in Mark Lane Express. 
June 22, 1846;] in which he spoke of the im¬ 
portance of the inorganic or mineral constituents 
of plants, as found in their ash. A Mr. Dawe, a far¬ 
mer present, confirmed it by saying, “ I have found the 
ashes of burnt wheat very productive; I had a stack 
of wheat accidentally burnt, and I have used the ashes 
for manure; the consequence was, as good a crop as I 
could have had from guano.” Mr. N. replied, “exactly 
so, in the burnt wheat you had all you wanted.” 
Liebig says, “ the ash of the same species of a plant 
are the best manure for a crop.” 
At a discussion “ Question,” before the London Far¬ 
mer’s Club, as reported in the Mark Lane Express, of 
November 8, 1847: “ What evidence is there that dung 
is deteriorated by drying, &c.,” Prof. Nesbit led off the 
discussion, and from experiments in his laboratory made 
out a loss of one pound of ammonia per ton; the market 
value of the cheapest may be estimated at Is. per 
pound—a loss to the farmer of 20s. per acre, if 20 tons 
are applied, if the manure is suffered to become dried. 
But he has not produced any evidence to show that ammo¬ 
nia is worth a shilling^ pound for agricultural purposes. 
A farmer present, a Mr. Cheetham, observed, “ that 
without boasting, he could say, that few persons had 
been more successful in growing turneps than himself. 
For more than 22 years he had never sown twice 
nor missed a crop. He said “ he was not able to enter 
into the various chemical questions connected with 
agriculture, or to discuss scientifically the benefits to 
be derived from ammonia, but he would mention a fact 
which seemed opposed to the notion of ammonia being 
©f such very great importance as a manure.” Some 
years ago they were short of manure; his father, who 
was then a farmer, bought some very old manure which 
had been lying scattered over a large surface at Stam¬ 
ford. This was turned over when intended for use, and 
there was sufficient moisture to cause it to ferment, yet 
at the time when it was applied to the land, it was in 
appearance little better than barley chaff. Notwith¬ 
standing its appearance, however, the crop of turneps 
was the most splendid that he had ever seen. He be¬ 
gan farming in 1822, and having this example before 
his eyes, he determined using year-old manure. 
In the Mark Lane Express of January 10, 1848, is 
a communication by Mr. Nesbit, on the recent discovery 
of an extraordinary amount of phosphoric acid, in some 
marl near Farnham, England. It has been observed 
wherever this marl came to the surface, the hops and 
the wheat grew almost without manure, and when ap¬ 
plied to other lands, the fertility was remarkably in¬ 
creased. 
This led Prof. N. to institute a series of most care¬ 
ful and rigid experiments, which resulted in proving the 
existence of about 5 per cent of bone earth, an extra¬ 
ordinary amount almost unparalleled in the natural or 
chemical history of soils. Ten tons of the dried marl 
would be an equivalent for a ton of bones. And bones 
have been long known as a valuable manure; a portion 
of their fertilizing properties have been attributed to 
their organic part, the oil and gelatine, as the last con¬ 
tains much nitrogen. Liebig, a few years since, an¬ 
nounced that the good resulting from the use of bone 
manure, was due to the “ bone earth,” (phosphate of 
lime,) and not to the organic part, as generally sup¬ 
posed; this statement was received with disbelief by 
many. But many accurate experiments have estab¬ 
lished the fact, that burnt bones are quite as efficacious 
‘200 
for manure, as those not deprived of their animal mat¬ 
ter; and burnt bones contain no nitrogen. So, too, 
when he announced the great economy of dissolving 
bones in sulphuric acid, and forming the easily dissolv¬ 
ed super phosphate of lime, so that 3 or 4 bushels of 
ground bones thus dissolved would be as efficient as 16 
or 20 bushels applied in the ordinary way. This idea 
was ridiculed by many in England as a “ bubble that 
would burst and be dissipated into air—-into thin air.” 
The truth of the above statements have been repeatedly 
verified, and are fully corroborated by Mr. Colman, page 
364, part 8, of his European survey. 
In the London Gardeners ’ Chronicle of April 4, 1846, 
is an interesting table of experiments by Prof. Daube- 
ny with several kinds of manure, upon the turnep crop. 
But I cannot go into particulars. The result of his ex¬ 
periments proved that a given quantity of phosphorite, 
or natural mineral phosphate of lime, was as efficient 
as an equal amount of bones, and that 22 tons of nitro¬ 
genous manure per acre, gave but a few cwt. more of 
turneps than 12 cwt. Spanish phosphorite, entirely des¬ 
titute of nitrogen. I could cue numerous other facts 
to prove my position, but I will come nearer home and 
adduce a few. I regret, however, that I shall from 
the length of this article, be obliged to treat them in a 
very summary way. 
Many of the readers of the Cultivator are aware of 
the existence of a mineral substance found in New-Jer¬ 
sey and farther south, and known as “green sand,” 
which possesses very valuable properties as a manure. 
It does not, so far as I can learn, contain any nitrogen, 
but it does produce very marked effects when applied in 
certain quantities upon the sandy lands of New-Jersey. 
And I wish I could get Prof. H. D. Rogers’ glowing 
account of its effects “ upon fields where the soil ori¬ 
ginally was nothing but sand.” He says: “A Mr. 
Wooley manured a piece of land in the proportion of 
200 loads of good (nitrogenised) stable manure per 
acre; by the use on the same kind of soil of 20 loads 
per acre of the green sand, the crops, clover and timo¬ 
thy, were much the heaviest upon the section which had 
received the marl. Difference in cost of manuring the 
land: stable manure $2.00 per acre, marling $5. “Land 
which had been sold for $2^ per acre, in consequence 
of the permanent increase in its fertility from the marl, 
is now worth $37 the acre.” The great value is due to 
the potassa which it contains. 
President Hitchcock, in his “ geological survey of 
Massachusetts,” devotes .several pages of his valuable 
report to an account of a kind-of marl found in differ¬ 
ent localities in Massachusetts, which he calls “ muck- 
sand”—but frejueitly called quick sand. He gives 
details respecting the good effects of this quick sand, 
dug from many feet below the surface; and in some in¬ 
stances the good results lasted for 10 to 17 years, fully 
equal to the best stable manure in its immediate effects, 
and more permanent. 
The great fertility of subsoils, and that dug from 
ditches, have been thousands of times noticed—even 
out-producing the most highly manured soils. 
The Hon. Dixon H. Lewis, in some observations at 
a meeting of the New-York Farmers’ Club last sum¬ 
mer, stated the “ best soil he ever had was that thrown 
out of ditehes.” 
In the last September number of the Cultivator, 
Mr- Editor, in your “ Sketches of farming in Western 
New-York,” you mention the great fertility of the sub¬ 
soil for several feet in depth, on Mr. Johnston’s and 
Mr. Delafield’s farms. 
“ That where ditches and drains had been dug, and 
the ear th which had been taken out was spread over the 
surface, the wheat, barley and oats were heavier than 
in any other part of the field.” In the present (April) 
number of the Cultivator, containing Mr. Ward’s ar- 
