ON SALTPETRE AND SODA IN HUNGARY. 
165 
house at Debreczin is said to have been established more than two 
hundred years. In Debreczin itself there is an artificial and not 
very productive kehr place near the boiling-house, as well as also 
a few plantations, and besides these the natural kehr places of 
twenty-four villages belong to the town. These far more produc- 
tive natural kehr places are always situated in the immediate 
neighborhood of the villages ; the most important are at Mike- 
Percs, Palayi, Vertes, Ascad, Sz. Mihaly, Nanas, and Szoboszlo. 
The workmen are all inhabitants of the villages, and carry on the 
manufacture of saltpetre in conjunction with agriculture. Szabo 
visited one of the principal kehr places, that at Mike-Peres, during 
the most favorable season, and ascertained all the particulars con- 
nected with it, which he states to be essentially the same at all 
the others. 
The kehr places at Mike-Peres is situated upon a gently slop- 
ing ground between a village and a marsh, which is never quite 
dry. It does not, like the natural soda kehr places in Hungary, 
yield the salt directly; but it is necessary that the earth, consisting 
of loose black sand mixed with chalk and clay, which formerly 
was a part of the marsh, should be strewed from time to time with 
ashes, especially straw-ashes, in order to make the salt come out 
upon the surface. The constantly moist ground receives the or- 
ganic matters, partly from the marsh and partly from the village, 
all the drainage from which flows to the marsh. As manure is 
not used there to put upon the land, but only for making banks 
round the fields, the saltpetre grounds receive a sufficient supply 
of appropriate material. Under these favorable circumstances, 
the saltpetre is formed, chiefly in May and June, even during 
twenty-four hours, in such quantity that it can be collected every 
evening. The uppermost surface of earth is scraped off by means 
of an iron, shaped like a knife, which is dragged by a horse, and 
the saline earth swept together and collected, while all the irregu- 
larities of the ground are again carefully levelled. 
The establishment of a new kehr place is preceded by a formal 
examination, in which attention is paid to the occurrence of cer- 
tain narcotic plants. Upon such ground as is suitable for kehr 
places, very good tobacco grows, which, however, is not used in 
consequence of its deflagrating in the pipe. All plants which 
assimilate saltpetre are carefully removed from the kehr places. 
