396 BULLETIN OF THE BUSSEY INSTITUTION. 
1872, procured a considerable quantity of ashes from a town in 
Maine, paid $1.60 per ton for moving the ashes thirty miles by 
railroad to Portland, and $2.00 per ton for bringing them from 
Portland to Boston, more than one hundred miles by steamboat. The 
cost of transferring the ashes from rail car to steamboat at Portland 
was $0.25 per ton. That is to say, the total cost per ton for trans- 
porting the ashes to Boston was $3.85, or nine cents per bushel, if we 
allow forty-two bushels of ashes to the ton. It is plain from what has 
been stated on page 390, as to the real value of ashes, that the farmers 
of this vicinity would be justified in paying a considerable sum per 
bushel for ashes in Maine, so long as the costs of transportation are no 
greater than this. 
In buying ashes, it would usually be easy to guard against the risk 
of adulteration by determining the specific gravity of the lye obtained 
from the sample that may happen to be under consideration.* To this 
end put a definite weight, say 1 pound, of the ashes to be tested in a 
bottle, together with a pint and a half of rain water, and shake the 
mixture at intervals during several hours. Then pour off the tolerably 
clear lye, test it with a delicate hydrometer, and compare the result 
with other results that have been obtained by testing in the same way 
several standard samples of ashes. Since the substances with which 
wood-ashes are liable to be adulterated; viz., coal-ashes, loam, and 
sand, contain only a small proportion of matters that are soluble in 
water, the specific gravity of lyes obtained by leaching ashes thus 
adulterated would necessarily be proportionately low. In order to be 
convinced of this fact, and to perceive its true significance, it would be 
well for the experimenter to make and test a series of mixtures of good 
wood-ashes and sand, or coal-ashes, in varying proportions; for exam- 
ple, one, two, and three ounces of the wood-ashes, with enough sand 
or coal-ashes in each instance to make up the quarter-pound needed 
for the test. Of course, the test applies with its full force only to dry 
ashes, that is to say to ashes that have never been wet, for it might be 
possible, though hardly practicable, economically speaking, to drench 
coal-ashes or leached ashes with refuse saline lyes of one kind or 
another that would act upon the hydrometer like potash lye. 
This specific-gravity test, simple though it be, is really one of con- 
* As has been recently suggested by Nessler. See Biedermann’s “ Central- 
Blatt fiir Agrikultur Chemie,” 1874, 6, 420. 
