are meadow mud, ashes, and a small proportion of animal manure. His success has been extraordinary as will be evident to any one who knows the exhausted condition of the soil, and who has witnessed the heavy crops it is made to yield.

In the application of liquid manure, made from meadow mud and potash, Dr. Nichols has been less successful this year than in his last year's experiment. A farther trial may establish or overthrow his theory on this subject. We hope he will continue his experiment, for it is of as much consequence that farmers should know what applications are useless or hurtful, as what will produce abundant har

vests.

The committee recommend that the communication of Dr. Nichols be published; they also desire him to furnish for publication, the analysis of the mud, and an essay on the subject of peat mud, muck, sand, &c., as promised in said communication, and they recommend that the society pay Dr. Nichols for his successful experiments, and valuable communications, a gratuity of ten dollars.

To the Committee to whom was referred the communication of Andrew Nichols, on the subject of Compost Manures, &c.

GENTLEMEN-Having invited the attention of the Trustees of the Essex Agricultural Society to our continued use of and experiments on fresh meadow, or peat mud, as a manure, it is, of course, expected

that the result of these experiments should be laid before them. The compost with which we planted most of our corn and potatoes the present year, was composed of the same materials, and managed in the same manner as that which we used last year for the same purpose. (See Essex Agricultural Transactions for 1839, page 35.)

Four acres of corn, on the same kind of soil, was manured in the hill with this compost, and one acre of corn on a more meagre portion of the same field, was manured in the same manner, with a compost consisting of the same kind of mud, half a cord of manure taken from the pigsty, and forty pounds of potash, second quality, dissolved in water, sprinkled over and worked into the heap, with the fork, in the same manner that the dry ashes were into the other compost. Of both kinds the same quantity, a common iron or steel shovel full to the hill, was used, and no difference in the crop which could be ascribed to the different manures, could be perceived. The hills were four by three feet apart on an average. In the borders and adjoining this piece of corn, one acre was planted with potatoes. The compost used on some portions of this consisted of rather a larger portion of coarse barn manure composed of meadow hay, corn fodder waste, &c., wet with the urine and mixed with the droppings of cattle, and less meadow mud. The whole six acres was hoed twice only after the use of the cultivator. The whole amount of labor after the ground was furrowed and the compost prepared in heaps on the field, is stated by the tiller of the ground, H. L. Gould, to have been forty nine days' work, of one man, previous to the cutting of the stalks. Pumpkins, squashes, and some beans were planted among the corn. The produce was four hundred and sixty bushel baskets of sound ears of corn, eighty bushels of potatoes, three cords of pumpkins, one and a half bushels of white beans. On one acre of the better part of the soil, harvested separately, there were

ets.

one hundred and twenty baskets of corn ears, and a full proportion of the pumpkins. On one eighth of an acre of Thorburn's tree corn treated in the same manner as the rest, the produce was nineteen baskA basket of this corn shells out seventeen quarts, one quart more than a basket of the ordinary kinds of corn. The meal for bread and puddings is of a superior quality. Could we depend upon its ripening, for, Thorburn's assertions to the contrary notwithstanding, it is a late variety of corn, (though it ripened perfectly with us last season, a rather unusually warm and long one,) farmers would do well to cultivate it more extensively than any otherkind.

The use of dry ashes on our black soil grass lands, showed an increased benefit from last year. But our experiments with liquid manure disappointed. us. Either from its not being of the requisite strength, or from the dryness of the season, or from our mistaking the effects of it last year, or from all these causes combined, the results confidently anticipated, were not realized; and from our experiments this year we have nothing to say in favor of its use, although we think it worthy of further experiments. On the first view of the subject, a dry season or a dry time might seem more favorable to the manifestations of benefit from watering plants with liquid manure, than wet seasons or times. But when we consider that when the surface of the earth is dry, the small quantity of liquid used would be arrested by the absorbing earth ere it reached the roots, and perhaps its fertilizing qualities changed, evaporated, or otherwise destroyed, by the greater heat to which at such times it must be exposed-it is not, I think, improbable that the different effects noticed in our experiments with this substance, the two past years, might be owing to this cause. It is my intention, should sufficient leisure permit, to analyse the soil cultivated and the mud used, and prepare a short essay on the subject of peat mud, muck, sand, &c.,

as manure, for publication in the next volume of the trancactions of the society.

Yours respectfully,

ANDREW NICHOLS.

Danvers, December 26, 1840.

SCIENCE OF AGRICULTURE.

BY DR.

A.

NICHOLS.

AGRICULTURE will at some future time, we doubt not, be reduced to an exact science. When the quantity and proportion of each of the elementary substances existing in any soil being known, the food best suited to nourish the several vegetables cultivated ascertained, a given quantity of heat and moisture, it may be presumed, will always produce results which may be calculated and predicted with as much certainty as astronomical phenomena now are. But how shall a work so desirable be accomplished? In the same manner, surely, that all other sciences have been perfected, by scientific men, by the head work of philosophers in their closets and chemists in their laboratories, and not by practical farmers in the field. These to be sure have an important part to act in this business. It is for them to observe and collect facts for the scientific chemist and naturalist to generalize and work into a system, and it is for them also to try the system so formed, and establish or overthrow it by actual experiments. How was the art of navigation reduced to an exact science. Not by the practical mariner, but by the

mathematician and astronomer. Had the sailor of olden time, who was well acquainted with every rope in his ship, and understood the management of his craft to perfection, but who dared not go out of sight of land lest he should fail to find his way back, been told that men who never walked a deck would one day be able to direct him how to lay his courses so as to reach with certainty any known point on the globe-so as to enable him to explore every broad ocean and unknown sea, and return home again without the least danger of losing his way; with what feelings suppose ye, he would have looked on his informant and how would he have treated such information? Much my dear farmer as you now perhaps feel toward me, and as you are perhaps disposed to treat the subject now under consideration. But before you suffer feelings of contempt to gain utterance, before you ridicule my views and assertions, I pray you to hear me and consider. The laws of nature are unchangeable, and when discovered, guide the operator unerringly to the accomplishment of his object, in all cases where natural forces are made to perform the work. Look at the steam engine. The practical mechanic, however expert in his trade, could never have built it until the man of science had taught him to measure with the utmost exactness the elasticity or expansive power of steam at any given temperature. Without system, which scientific men can alone contrive, the knowledge which individuals obtain by personal experience is nearly all lost to the community.

An old mariner whom I once knew, and who without ever acquiring the science of navigation, rejoiced in the title of captain, and guided his vessel as safely as other more scientific commanders, for a long series of years to and from Salem and Baltimore, used to say his old schooner knew the way to Baltimore. But could this man have put on board his craft another seaman as skilful in managing a vessel as himself, and who, like him, had spent his life in the coasting