ariant of this plan was to smother the
weed with tons of dry cement and sand from airplanes; the rainy season,
due to begin in a few months, would add the necessary water and the
grass would then be encased in a presumably unbreakable tomb.

But the most popular suggestion embodied the use of salt, ordinary table
salt. From their own experience in backyard and garden, eager men and
women wrote in urging this common mineral be used to end the menace of
the grass. "It will Kill ennything," wrote an Imperial Valley farmer.
"Its lethal effect on plantlife is instantaneous," agreed a former
Beverly Hills resident. "I know there is not anything like Salt to
destroy Weeds" was part of a long and rambling letter on blueruled
tabletpaper, "In the June of 1926 or 7 I cannot remember exactly it may
have been 28 I accidentally dropped some Salt on a beautiful
Plumbago...."

It was proposed to spray the surface, to drive tunnels through the roots
to conduct brine, to bombard sectors with sixteeninch guns firing
shrapnel loaded with salt, to isolate by means of a wide saline band the
whole territory, both occupied and threatened. Salt enthusiasts argued
that nothing except a few million tons of an inexpensive mineral would
be wasted if an improbable failure occurred, but if successful in
stopping the advance the country could wait safely behind its rampart
till some weapon to regain the overrun area was found.

But the salt advocates didnt have everything their own way. There arose
a bitter antisalt faction taking pleasure at hurling sneers at these
optimistic predictions and delight in demolishing the arguments. Miss
Francis, they said, who ought to know more about it than anyone else,
claimed the grass would break down even the most stable compound and
take what it needed. Well, salt was a compound, wasnt it? If the prosalt
fanatics had their way they would just be offering food to a hungry
plant. The salt supporters asked what proof Miss Francis had ever
advanced that the plant absorbed everything or indeed that her
Metamorphizer had anything to do with metabolism and had not merely
induced some kind of botanical giantism? The antisalts, jeering at their
enemies as Salinists and Salinites, promptly threw away Miss Francis'
hypothetical support and relied instead on the proposition that if the
salt were to be efficacious--an unlikely contingency--it would have to
reach the roots and if crudeoil, poured on when the plant was young