SALT AS MANURE. 
27 6 
generally buys manures, if lie buys at all. A very important 
quality, therefore, in these assistants is, that a great deal should be 
contained in a small compass, that they should be “multum in parvo,” 
because at so busy a time it would he impossible to draw from a long 
distance, any material that required to be laid on in a large way, as 
dung for instance. At a time of the year when season is of so much 
consequence, the saving of a good one may entirely depend on the 
expedition with which the work is performed. The farmer, I am 
sure, has often lost his patience, while drawing from even the home¬ 
steads of his farm, the supplies necessary for his turnip crop; for 
though he may devote all his strength to the object, yet from the 
ponderous nature of the article, and the large quantity necessary, the 
dispatch is very dispfoportioned to the work to be performed. It 
therefore follows, that artificial substitutes, for which he has to go to 
market, to be profitably employed, should be susceptible of great 
diffusion in proportion to their bulk. This is certainly the case with 
ground bones, and with rape cake, but still more so with prepared 
salt. With all of these, we are enabled by means of the drill machine, 
sowing seed and manure together, and the help of three men and 
three horses, to dispatch from eight to ten acres a day, and where 
the broad casting machine is used, which for prepared salt is better 
than the drill, owing to the pungency of this manure requiring its 
more effectual intermixture with the soil, the quantity of work per¬ 
formed is quite as great, with less of horse and manual labour.” 
“ Oil and blubber are possessed of very conspicuous properties as 
enrichers of the soil, almost the whole of their elements being con¬ 
vertible into the sustenance of vegetable life. Oil is a compound of 
carbon and hydrogen, and all kinds of vegetables feed on these 
greedily. Previously to the decomposition of salt, I made frequent 
trials with blubber, and the success which attended them led me to 
think that its usefulness would soon be generally known ; but I be¬ 
lieve its employment on land is, at present, very partial. Sir John 
Sinclair and others recommended it long ago. My experiments with 
it were first made on wheat, and the produce exceeded that from yard 
dung in the same field, but I thought it w r as not so lasting. For 
turnips it is very effective, and I never observed any injury from flv 
where it was used, the protection being afforded, as I conceived, by 
the offensive odour of the blubber. 
“ It would seem not improbable that those who have directed their 
attention to this substance as a manure, may have found some diffi¬ 
culty in preparing it for an equable distribution on the ground. This 
circumstance might have brought it into disrepute. Its thick and 
