word, or when spoken of in their connexion with 
agriculture, must not be further identified with 
this powder than in chemical analysis of their 
characteristic and most valuable element; but 
must be understood to include the charred debris 
of half-burnt wood, the smouldered, shrivelled, 
and exsiccated leaves and stems of half-burnt 
herbs, the calcined residue of burnt sward and 
clay, the incinerated remains of burnt bones, 
hair, and horns, the cinders of half-burnt coke 
and coal, the promiscuous contents of every kind 
of ashpit, the heterogeneous residue of the com- 
bustion of all sorts of rubbish, and even the pow- 
dery portions of the matter ejected by volcanoes. 
Ashes have, in all ages, held a conspicuous 
place among manures; but, in consequence of 
their very diversified nature, they have, as a whole, 
been always ill understood. Both the ancient 
Jews and the ancient Romans burnt their stub- 
ble; and the ancient Britons burnt both their 
stubble and their straw, and scattered the ashes 
over their land. Cato recommends the ashes of 
the twigs and branches of trees as manure; Pal- 
| ladius says that this manure will maintain land 
in good condition during five years; and a Ger- 
man writer of the sixteenth century, states that 
the farmers of Lombardy regarded ashes as a 
much better manure than dung. Such crude 
notions show that ashes were both greatly and 
ignorantly appreciated. Even British farmers 
of the present day universally employ this man- 
ure, and, in the great majority of instances, seem 
unaware of the wide diversity of its composition, 
and the precise character of its various modes of 
action ; and not a few of them commit egregious 
errors in applying it, and are quite unable to 
account for its highly fertilizing power in some 
circumstances, and its utter uselessness in others. 
The ashes of wood, turf, and coal, when these 
substances are used as domestic fuel, are often 
mixed up with the ordinary contents of the farm- 
yard dunghill,—and, in this case, they occasion 
little difference in the properties of the com- 
pound manure; but when they constitute the 
principal mass of a dungheap, as in towns and 
at cottages, they necessarily rule the action of 
the manure in all its intermixtures with the 
soil; and when they are applied alone, they very 
generally act beneficially both as diluents and as 
top-dressings,—in the former case, loosening and 
stimulating clays, and heavy tenacious loams,— 
and, in the latter case, ‘strengthening the her- 
bage, improving its quality, and encouraging the 
growth of white clover. In order to give a full 
view of this important, universal, and exceed- 
ingly diversified manure, we shall first take a 
general notice of vegetable ashes, and next par- 
ticular and successive notices of wood ashes, peat 
ashes, turf ashes, straw ashes, soap boiler’s ashes, 
coal ashes, bone ashes, clay ashes, and volcanic 
ashes. 
Vegetable Ashes.—The ashes of vegetables vary 
in composition according to the nature of the 
ASHES. 
plant, the quality of the soil in which it grows, 
and the chemical character and action of the 
manure with which the soil is mixed. Plants 
which grow in a silicious soil yield ashes which 
are richer in silica than those of plants of the 
same kind which grow upon calcareous soil ; 
plants which grow upon a calcareous sand, 
and plants which grow upon a granitic sand, 
when these sands have been treated with the 
same kind of manure, yield the same kind of | 
ashes ; and different kinds of plants, though | 
grown on one kind of soil, with one kind of both 
manure and culture, yield ashes of either differ- 
ent constituent ingredients, or of different pro- 
portions of the same ingredients. Yet the con- 
stituents of ashes of all varieties seldom if ever 
exist in the ashes in the same state in which 
they existed in the plant; but are almost always, 
or perhaps without exceptions, the altered results 
of combustion. Potash, soda, lime, silica, mag- 
nesia, the oxide of iron, the oxide of manganese, 
chlorine, phosphoric acid, carbonic acid, and sul- 
phuric acid, are the substances which usually 
constitute the ashes of land plants ; and alumina 
and oxide of copper have occasionally, yet very 
seldom, been detected. Of these substances pot- 
ash, soda, lime, magnesia, alumina, silica, iron, man- 
ganese, and copper, possess the chemical charac- | 
ter of bases, while chlorine and the three acids 
operate as combining and neutralizing powers; 
so that many salts of a nature to exert distinc- 
tive and even energetic manurial action may be 
formed,—particularly sulphate of soda, sulphate 
of magnesia, chloride of sodium or common salt, 
bone-dust, or phosphate of lime, alum, copperas, 
gypsum, and a kind of bone-dust, salt of iron, or 
phosphate of iron. Some of the salts derivable 
from the combination of the bases and the acids, 
such as the compounds of potash and soda with 
chlorine, silica, carbonic acid, and sulphuric acid, | 
are soluble in water; while others, such as the 
compounds of lime, and one or two of the other | 
bases, with silica, carbonic acid, and phosphoric 
acid, are insoluble. 
entire bulk of the ashes consists, in very many 
instances, of carbonate of lime. The quantity or 
proportion of ashes, obtained from plants which 
have been dried in the air, varies from 14 to 33, 
and even 6 per cent. of their weight, and is af- 
fected, not only by the genus or species of the | 
plants, by the aggregate amount of their ex- 
posure to the sun, and by the character of the 
soil in which they grew, but also by the peculiar 
secretions or constitution of the different parts of 
individual plants, and even by accidental circum- 
stances in the same part of two plants of one 
species. : 
Very carefully dried specimens of plants and 
parts of plants, of the kinds most commonly 
cultivated, were analyzed by M. Boussingault, 
and ascertained to contain a percentage of 
ashes as follows :— wheat straw ‘070, wheat 
024, rye straw ‘036, rye ‘023, oat straw ‘051, © 
More than one-half of the | 
