ng, and kept heavily manured for a series of years,
has shown stump-foot when cabbage were planted, with intervals of two
and three years between. My theory is, that the _mere presence of the
cabbage_ causes stump-foot on succeeding crops grown on the same soil.
This is proved by the fact that where a piece of land in grass, close
adjoining a piece of growing cabbage, had been used for stripping them
for market, when this was broken up the next season and planted to
cabbage, stump-foot appeared only on that portion where the waste leaves
fell the year previous. I have another instance to the same point, told
me by an observing farmer, that, on a piece of sod land, on which he ran
his cultivator the year previous, when turning his horse every time he
had cultivated a row, he had stump-footed cabbage the next season just
as far as that cultivator went, dragging, of course, a few leaves and a
little earth from the cabbage piece with it. Still, though the mere
presence of cabbage causes stump-foot, it is a fact, that, under certain
conditions, cabbage can be grown on the same piece of land year after
year successfully, with but very little trouble from stump-foot. In this
town (Marblehead), though, as I have stated, we cannot, on our farms,
follow cabbage with cabbage, even with the highest of manuring and
cultivation, yet in the gardens of the town, on the same kind of soil
(and our soil is green stone and syenite, not naturally containing
lime), there are instances where cabbage has been successfully followed
by cabbage, on the same spot, for a quarter of a century and more. In
the garden of an aged citizen of this town, cabbages have been raised
_on the same spot of land_ for over half a century.

The cause of stump foot cannot, therefore, be found in the poverty of
the soil, either from want of manure or its having been rendered effete
from over cropping. It is evident that by long cultivation soils
gradually have diffused through them something that proves inimical to
the disease that produces stump foot. I will suggest as probable that
the protection is afforded by the presence of some alkali that old
gardens are constantly acquiring through house waste which is always
finding its way there, particularly the slops from the sink, which
abound in potash. This is rendered further probable from the fact given
by Mr. Peter Henderson, that, on soils in this vicinity, naturally
abounding in lime, cabbage can be raised year fo