per acre. 
SALT. 
described it in the jargon of his craft nearly two 
centuries since; when he said.—‘ The sal mira- 
bilis (common salt), as it is of itself, is, by reason 
of its corroding virtues, which it as yet retains, 
plainly unfit for the multiplication of vegetables, 
for that being so used would prove more hurt- 
ful than profitable. Upon this account it is 
necessary that to one part of it be added two 
parts by weight of the best calyx vine (lime), 
which being moistened with water and made 
into balls, are to be well heated red-hot for an 
hour, that so all the corrosivity being introverted, 
the sal mirabilis may be alkalizated, and used 
to vegetables for an universal medicine; for it 
conserves its attracting force, and loseth it not in 
the heating red-hot.’ Christopher Packe, who, 
in 1688, published in English Glauber’s folio 
volume, dwells at considerable length, in his pre- 
face, upon this mixture of salt and lime; ‘ for 
the enriching of poor and barren land, it is the 
cheapest of all mixtures, and is most easy to be 
done, for any ploughman having but once seen 
it done may be presently able to manage it.’ 
Salt and lime was used as a manure by Mr. 
Mitchell of Ayr, many years since; and he, not 
knowing what others had done with this fer- 
tilizer before his time, considered himself to be 
the discoverer. He thus described his process :— 
‘Take 32 bushels of lime, and slack it with 
sea- water, previously boiled to the saturated 
state. This quantity is sufficient for an acre 
of ground, and may be either thrown out of 
the carts with a shovel over the land in the 
above state, or made into compost with forty 
loads of moss or earth, in which state it will be 
found to pay fully for the additional labour, and 
is sufficient for an acre of fallow ground, though 
ever so reduced before. Its component parts 
are muriate and sulphate of lime, mineral alkalies 
in an uncombined state, also muriate and car- 
bonate of soda. All the experiments have done 
well with it, but especially wheat and beans; 
and it has not been behind any manure with 
which it has been compared. There is one in- 
stance in which it was tried in comparison with 
72 cart loads of soaper’s waste and dung; and 
although this was an extraordinary dressing, 
yet that with this salt and lime manure was 
fully above the average of the field.” 
A mixture of salt with soot, and also mixtures 
of it with vegetable mould and with ditch scrap- 
ings, have produced excellent effects. “The 
mixture of salt with soot,” says Mr. Johnson, 
“produces the most remarkable effects, especially 
when trenched into ground prepared for carrots, 
Mr. G. Sinclair found that when the soil, un- 
manured, produced 23 tons of carrots per acre, 
the same soil, fertilised with a mixture of only 
64 bushels of salt and 64 of soot, yielded 40 tons 
Mr. Belfield describes the mixture as 
equally beneficial for wheat. And Mr. Cart- 
wright found that when the soil, without any 
| addition, yielded per acre 157 bushels of potatoes, 
133 
dressing the same land with a mixture of 30 
bushels of soot and 8 bushels of salt made it pro- 
duce per acre 240 bushels.” 
“ Mixtures of salt and earths,” says Donaldson, 
“have been used with great benefit for turnips, 
and mixed and unmixed with farm-yard dung. 
The results were in every case favourable at the 
rate of 20 to 25 bushels an acre; and on carrots 
and potatoes the quantities of 13 and 9 bushels 
of salt were attended with very beneficial effects. 
In one case, 25 bushels were visibly much supe- 
rior to 18 bushels on an acre; while for carrots, 
64 bushels exceeded 133 in weight of crop under 
a similar application. In another set of experi- 
ments, on potatoes, we find 40 bushels of salt, 
one-half laid on in September, and the other 
half after the crop was planted, did not exceed 
in produce the quantity from the 20 bushels 
applied in September, and did not equal the | 
usual crop from stable-yard dung alone, and that 
40 bushels of salt applied with stable-yard dung 
did not much exceed the produce from the lat- 
ter manure alone. These results are decidedly 
against the effects of salt; further experiments, 
on onions, carrots, turnips, potatoes and mangel- 
wurzel, showed a regular increase in the produce 
of all the articles, as the quantity of salt applied 
was diminished.” 
Salt has been applied to all sorts of grass lands, 
in various ways, in various quantities, and for 
various purposes, in most parts of Britain; and 
though very diversified in effect upon the quan- 
tity of produce, it has always, when moderately 
and wisely used, been highly beneficial in effect 
on the quality. From 6 to 16 bushels per acre 
have been very commonly used for the purpose 
of general fertilization, and have been generally 
found to improve both the quantity and the 
quality of the herbage, to kill the least re- 
fractory kinds of weeds, and to purify and 
sweeten the whole soil and sward ; and from 20 
to 40 bushels have been often used to destroy 
rank growths of mosses, nettles, ragworts, thistles, 
rushes, or other refractory weeds, and have some- 
times killed for a time all the useful as well as 
the noxious plants, and have at other times but 
temporarily subdued the weeds, and proved of 
very small eventual efficacy. “It has been 
proved by experiment in Cheshire,” says Sir 
John Sinclair, “that, after draining sour rushy 
land, if salt be spread upon the surface, in the 
month of October, its effects on the crop of next 
year will be in the highest degree satisfactory. 
In one spot, where 8 bushels were spread, a most 
flourishing crop of rich grass appeared in the 
month of May, but a still stronger crop in the 
month of July, where 16 bushels had been ap- 
plied. In the Netherlands, Dutch turf ashes, 
which are strongly impregnated with saline par- 
ticles, are applied to the second as well as to the 
first crop of clover, with great success; and 
Mr. Hollinshead strongly recommends sowing 6 
bushels per acre on meadows, after the hay is 
