116 
STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
It was certainly true, that cases did not always occur so simple 
in their nature, and so capable of a satisfactory solution. 
Nevertheless, it was a good example of one of a series of cases. 
For its complete and effectual management, the farmer required 
no more information than had been specified, and the difference 
to him in income amounted to about one thousand dollars 
annually. 
Again, whatever may be the quality of beef or butter, or of 
any other provisions that are preserved with salt, nothing is 
more common than to find that they are often passed by in 
competition, if the quality of the salt shall not have been most 
carefully studied. With fish the same attention is necessary 
as with beef. Common salt is liable to various contaminations 
in different parts of the globe. The most frequent are sul¬ 
phate of magnesia, muriate of magnesia, and carbonate of 
soda. The first gives a bitter taste to the meat cured with it; 
the second renders it acrid; the last gives it a peculiar alkaline 
taste. Many are the processes for purifying salt, and the tests 
by which the impurities are detected, are easily understood and 
applied. [The tests were then illustrated and explained.] 
The great object was always to secure pure salt, the taste of 
which might be described as sweet and saline, and totally free 
from the irritating and offensive qualities of the impurities 
mentioned. 
Another instance was then cited, in which cheese of a very 
plain quality, and with little or no flavor, had been much im¬ 
proved by introducing into it a small portion of a cheese that 
sold at several times the price, a kind of fermentation ensuing 
subsequently accompanied by the development of a microscopic 
fungus that gradually extended through the whole mass, when 
kept for a few weeks in a damp cellar, or surrounded by a cloth 
moistened with water. 
Dr. Reid then entered on a series of experiments illustrating 
generally the system of instruction he desired to introduce in 
the Common School, and the apparatus and materials he pro¬ 
posed to employ; he contended that until some such system 
was in general operation throughout the land, the population 
