For the American Agriculturist.
For the American Agriculturist.
New-York, 14th November, 1843.
TheGardeners' Chronicle, published in England, has the following criticism on my essay of dock-mud, inserted in your April number of this year, page 13:—
"We trust the editor is more correct in his other statements than in this, concerning the percentage of sea-salt in guano, which contains little more than a trace of it."
I have never analysed the guano, but depended on one or two analyses given by Professor Johnston, reader of chemistry in the University of Durham, England, in the appendix to his Lectures on Agricultural Chemistry. He gives tables of contents of two parcels, the first containing 30.3 per cent., the second rather more than 11 per cent. of sea-salt. I took the larger quantity, to prove that if dock-mud contained sea-salt, it could be no objection to it as a fertilizer.
It is highly important that the tables of analysis of celebrated manures should be correctly given, and if the editor of the Chronicle can furnish correct tables, he will be conferring an important boon on the agricultural community of the whole world.
Wm. Partridge.