59. Chap. 59.-What Plants Are Benefitted By Salt Water.

CHAP. 59.—WHAT PLANTS ARE BENEFITTED BY SALT WATER.

A peculiar remedy for the maladies to which radishes, beet, rue, and cunila are subject, is salt water, which has also the additional merit of conducing very materially to their sweetness and fertility. Other plants, again, are equally benefitted by being watered with fresh water, the most desirable for the purpose being that which is the coldest and the sweetest to drink: pond and drain-water, on the other hand, are not so good, as they are apt to carry the seeds of weeds along with them. It is rain,[1] however, that forms the principal aliment of plants; in addition to which, it kills the insects as they develope themselves upon them.

1. Rain-water, if collected in cisterns, and exposed to the heat of the sun, is the most beneficial of all rain has the effect also of killing numerous insects which have bred in the previous drought.