BULLETIN OF THE BUSSEY INSTITUTION. 395 
the chemical arts is filled with examples almost precisely similar to 
this one. No doubt but that one step in the process of introducing 
the German potashes will be the fabrication from them of imitations 
of the American potashes in which all the impurities and peculiarities 
of the latter will be found as well as the outward appearances. How- 
ever this may be, it remains clear that wood-ashes are likely to become 
more generally available for American farmers than they have ever 
been before. Hence the importance of considering carefully the intrin- 
sic worth of wood-ashes and the ways and means of procuring them. 
On inquiry, I learn from a prominent Boston dealer in potashes, 
that nowhere in this country is wood burned nowadays by potash 
makers for the sake of its ashes. It is only where ashes can be cheaply 
collected by wagons driven from house to house that potashes are still 
made. At present potashes come chiefly from the Western States and 
from Canada; from Milwaukee in particular, and from as far away as 
St. Paul. A small quantity still comes from Vermont, and some from the 
State of New York. In Maine, also, potashes are made at Bangor, 
the wood-ashes being collected not only from house to house in the 
vicinity of that city, but brought there in car loads by railway. Soap- 
boilers are almost everywhere the makers of potashes at the present 
time. Wherever a soap-boiler is established he collects the wood-ashes 
of his neighborhood and leaches them. In so far as there is a local 
demand for soft soap he employs the potassic lyes for making such soap, 
and the remainder of the lye he boils down and disposes of in the form 
of potashes. 
When the price of American potashes shall have fallen to the point 
at which the manufacture of them ceases to be profitable, or even before 
that point is reached, it will often be worth the farmer’s while to inquire 
of the soap-boilers and the railway companies whether wood-ashes can- 
not be brought to him at a price which he will be willing to pay. That 
such trausportation is perfectly practicable is shown by the fact that 
damp leached ashes of comparatively little real worth have for many 
years been a regular article of transportation from the wooded 
regions of northern New York and the Canadas to Connecticut, 
Long Island, and the New England seaboard.* Iam informed that 
a farmer of Plymouth county in this State, who, in the autumn of 
* As described by Professor Johnson, in his article on the value of leached 
ashes in “ Report Connecticut Board of Agriculture,” 1872-73, p. 417. 
