The Fairfield Herald

Wheat.

The Country Gentleman publishes the following communication:

The articles which have recently appeared in your paper, on this subject, have been of great interest to some of us. They are certainly convincing as to the value of salt as a manure for the wheat crop. The cause, too, is easily explained; soda being a large constituent of salt, and that combining with the silex in the soil, forming silicate of soda, a large ingredient both in the straw and in the grain of wheat, as well as many other grains.

We have corroborating evidence of this in the action of caustic soda upon straw in the new process styled the hydrostatic, for making paper. Seven tons of straw are cut up with a straw cutter, into not more than half-inch lengths, and macerated for seven hours with caustic soda and hot water in a huge revolving boiler. At the end of that time the silica in the straw has combined with the soda, and remains in solution as silicate of soda, while the mass of vegetable fibre has been converted into a soft pulp ready for bleaching into paper stock. Here would be a most admirable special manure for wheat, could it be utilized; but, with many other valuable articles, it is usually thrown away at the paper mills. Common salt is, doubtless, a concentrated and portable substitute for this article, and it is to be hoped that many farms will give it a trial, on this crop, the present season. Could we but add one bushel to the acre of the yield, or save that much in straw, obviating risk of lodging, or liability to insects or rust, through superior strength of constitution given to the plant, or earlier ripening of the berry, as your correspondent claims, what an immense boon it would be to the agricultural interest of the country. A gain of only one bushel per acre would certainly be a gain to the farmers of the United States of millions of dollars. But caution must be exercised, and great care must be used to prevent too much being applied to the soil. Too much would have a bad effect, and half a bushel per acre will doubtless be enough.

By all means let us have this important question thoroughly tested this season.