130 
ground, by making them void the contents of 
their bodies, such evacuations being too powerful 
for them to withstand. It has this additional 
advantage, that the vermin thus become food for 
those very plants which otherwise they would 
have destroyed.” 
Salt, used in various ways, is a well-known 
preventive or remedy of the fungal diseases of 
the cereal crops. The application of it as a 
manure or top-dressing tends more or less to 
prevent both rust and mildew; yet cannot al- 
ways be depended on, and requires the exercise 
of some caution. Manuring with the refuse salt 
from the pilchard fishery in the South of Eng- 
land, was long ago found to be a constant pre- 
ventive of rust in a district where the disease 
infested all the unsalted lands. The cautious 
aspersion of a clean solution of salt is one of the 
best known cures for actual mildew. See the 
articles Rust and Mitprw. The immersion of 
seed-wheat in a brine of sufficient strength to 
float an egg, followed by the frequent stirring of 
the steep and the skimming away of all the light 
and unsound grains which rise to the top, has 
long been practised throughout a great part of 
England as a preventive of smut. See the article 
Smut. 
The value of salt, in small quantities, as a 
manure, appears to have been well known in 
ancient times. Cato, Virgil, Pliny, and Columello 
all record its power of improving the herbage of 
pastures or the dried fodder of cattle; and two 
remarkable sayings in the Gospels —that the 
apostles of the Redeemer were “the salt of the 
earth,” and that salt which has lost its savour 
is neither fit for the land nor yet for the dung- 
hill”—seem to point to a prevailing practical 
acquaintance, throughout the civilized world or 
at least in Palestine, with the fertilizing proper- 
ties of salt. The use of it on sheep pastures or 
with sheep feed has been observed in Spain from 
the earliest times, and became known at an early 
period in Germany; the efficacy of it against 
“murrain or rotte,’ was known in England in 
the 16th century; and the direct fertilizing 
powers of it upon the soil were tested by experi- 
ment at Clapham about the middle of the 17th 
century. But salt became lost to British agri- 
culture, in the reign of William III., by the im- 
position on it of a war-tax which raised the 
price of it from 6d. to upwards of 20s. per bushel: 
and it did not become available till the repeal of 
the tax in 1823. Many farmers were now totally 
ignorant of its adaptation to manurial purposes ; 
and others made experiments with it in methods 
so loose, inaccurate, and preposterous as either 
to defeat its success or to bring it under serious 
suspicion. Most farmers, therefore, continued 
long indifferent about it; and some hotly dis- 
puted or angrily denied its claim to rank as a 
manure; and only a few, by means of enlightened 
experiment and patient recommendation, even- 
tually brought it into general favour. 
SALT. 
Salt operates in various ways as a fertilizer ; 
but must always be applied in small quantity, 
and with due adaptation to one or more or all of 
its specific modes of action; for if used in excess 
or at improper times or in unsuitable circum- 
stances, it may be useless or even hurtful. It is 
a direct though scanty principle of the food of 
some plants; it affords other principles of the 
food of plants, particularly soda, in result of a 
short and easy process of decomposition and re- 
combination; it converts many hurtful organic 
bodies and refractory organic matters in the soil 
into principles of nutrition; it assists the com- 
plex, ameliorating chemical processes of fallow- 
ing, in their action on both the minerals and the 
artificial manures of the soil; it stimulates the 
organisms and accelerates the secretions of grow- 
ing plants; it mitigates the evils of sourness and 
coldness and wetness in moist, stiff, grass lands ; 
it promotes the tenderness and sapidity of gra- 
mineous herbage ; it promotes the vegetation of 
oily seeds; it assists the action and increases the 
power of lime and soot and other artificial 
mineral manures; and it renders the soil to 
which it is applied more absorbescent of moisture 
from the atmosphere, and helps to protect both 
it and the crops growing on it from the injurious 
effects of great and sudden vicissitudes of tem- 
perature. 
As to most of the methods in which salt acts 
directly as a fertilizer, however, it naturally 
exists in quite sufficient quantity in all localities 
near the sea, and requires to be artificially ap- 
plied only in places which are little visited with 
saline vapours. “If we examine into the results 
of the experiments which have been made with 
salt as a manure,” says Dr. Madden, “ we shall 
find that, after leaving out those where obvious 
mistakes in quantity were made, they directly 
corroborate the opinion that the applicability of 
a special manure should be determined by ana- 
lysis, in order to prevent the probability of a 
failure; for it will be found, by examination, 
that, in those cases where it either produced no 
effect, or was injurious, the soil was in a situa- 
tion to receive supplies of salt from natural 
sources; whereas, the situations where salt is 
useful as a manure, are such as to exclude these 
natural supplies. It may not be generally known 
that the clouds which form over the sea always 
contain « greater or less quantity of salt, which 
of course will be deposited in the soil by the 
rain; and, moreover, that during the occurrence 
of sea-breezes, the spray travels to a very consider- - 
able distance inland, and is likewise deposited on 
the land. From these two sources it may be 
premised with comparative certainty, that places 
near the sea, particularly such as lie in the direc- 
tion of the prevailing sea-breezes, will obtain a 
sufficiency of salt, whereas inland situations will, 
in all probability, be much benefitted by an arti- 
ficial supply. ‘To give some idea of the quantity 
of salt contained in clouds near the sea, I may 
