52 
MANURES. 
in these remarks, is this, that the more alkaline any 
salt is, the better is it for manure. Hence, as a gen¬ 
eral rule about the use of salts, it may be laid down 
that the alkaline salts, that is, potash, pearlash, com¬ 
mon ashes, barilla ashes, white, or soda ash, are the 
best. And as these, in all their various shapes, are 
the cheapest and most common articles, so you need 
not run after a long list of other salts. Next in value 
to the real alkalies, are spent ashes, used in a light, 
porous, open, sandy soil, if you would derive the 
greatest benefit from them. Next to these come peat 
ashes. You well know these are of no value to the 
soapmaker. But not so to you. They show only 
traces of alkaline power. But treat them as you did 
spent ashes. Their power, independent of their bone- 
dust, which is by no means small, and their plaster, 
which is still greater, and their lime, which is perhaps 
the greatest, lies in the alkali, which is locked up, as 
it is in spent ashes. Treat them, therefore, as you did 
spent ashes, and then peat ashes will and do afford 
alkali. So too coal ashes, even your hard anthracite 
ashes, yield all the substances which spent ashes do. 
It is easily seen, therefore, when, how, and where 
spent ashes, peat ashes, coal ashes, are most likely to 
do good. Perhaps we may not have a better place to 
state the fact, that a cord of soap-boilers’ spent ashes 
contains about fifty pounds of potash. When we add 
to this, one hundred and seventeen pounds of bone- 
dust, and about a ton and a half of chalk, or carbonate 
of lime, which acts chiefly on the soil, and so comes 
not now under consideration, it is seen that there is 
no cheaper source of alkali and salts, to one w’thin 
reasonable carting distance of a soap-boiler, than spent 
ashes. They are marl, bonedust, plaster, and alkali 
combined. 
