264 



THE AGRICULTURAL NEWS. 



August 17, 1912. 



EDITORIAl. NOTICES. 



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gigriciiltural Jleiu^ 



Vol. XL SATURDAY, AUGUST 17. 1912. No. 269. 



NOTES AND COMMENTS. 



Contents of Present Issue. 



The editorial in this issue is entitled The Causes of 

 Fertility in Pastures. It gives a description of inter- 

 esting and suggestive work regarding pastures that 

 has been carried out recently in England. 



The Exploitation of Ramie. 



A note of some interest in relation to the employ- 

 ment of ramie fibre in the manufacture of incandescent) 

 gas-mantles is published in the Jaurnal of the Roijal 

 Soch-ty of Arts, for .July •). For reasons probably 

 connected wiih its high absorptive prciperties, ramie 

 ansueis admirably for the purpose mentioned. As 

 a .single pound of ramie yarn is computed to make 

 five or six gross of mantles, it is obvious that the 

 aggregate weight of raw material required to satisfy 

 I Lie lighting industry is relatively small. Even ia 

 this field, however, ramie is said to have a more or 

 less Serious rival in moulded mantles made by dissolv- 

 ing and precipitating cellulose in a manner akin to 

 that by which artificial silk is made. 



It does not appear that ramie is brought into 

 large use for oiher purposes, and there seem at 

 present to be few prospects of its successful employ- 

 ment in other directions: 'apart from a limited 

 range of uses ramie remains easily the most con- 

 sistent disappointment in the whole family of 

 textile fibres. More money has been sunk in its 

 development to less purpose than in anything that has 

 engaged English attentiim. According to estimates, 

 which nobody contradicts, some thirty millions have 

 been lost in ramie by planters and manufacturers 

 during fifty years. One ( Jerman undertaking succeed- 

 ing where virtually everyone else has failed, pays good 

 and regular dividends out of ramie manufacture, but 

 otherwise, the industrial history is a story of unrelieved 

 disaster.' 



Attention is drawn to the account of the new issue 

 of the Bulletin of the Imperial Institute, which 

 appears on page 2(11. 



The Insect Notes, on page 2(i(), consist of a short 

 article and two notes on subjects of interest. These 

 deal with the cotton worm in the United States, 

 a weevil enemy of Caravonica cottun, and the destruc- 

 tion of lawns by caterpillars. 



Page 2(i7 is taken up by an abstract of an article 

 in which the subject of ventilation is considered in an 

 original and interesting manner. 



A short account of some of the subjects that will be 

 considered by the Agricultural Section at the next 

 meeting of the British Association is presented on page 

 269. It will be remembered that the occasion of that 

 meeting will be the first at which agriculture is to be 

 taken as a separate section. 



On page 270, the Fungus Notes comprise an illus- 

 trated article ])resenting some miscellaneous informa- 

 tion regarding plant diseases. 



A short article giving results obtained with Fun- 

 tumia in Dominica will be found on page 271. 



Increased Seed Germination by Using Sulphurio 

 Acid. 



Interesting information is contained in Bulletin 

 312 of the Agricultural Kxperiment Station, Cornell 

 University, in which the claim to have discovered' the 

 method of improving the germination of seeds by the 

 use of strong sulphuric acid is made by one of the 

 authors. The experiments described were carried out 

 chiefly with seeds of leguminous plants that are them- 

 selves of no direct interest in the West Indies, as well 

 as with c"tton seed: the treatment consisted in immers- 

 ing the seed in concentrated sulphuric acid (of specific 

 gravity IHi) for a few minutes. The method of using 

 the sulphuric acid was to pour on to the seed a quan-. 

 tity of it equal to about five or six times the volume of 

 the seed; after the mixture had been stirred thorough- 

 ly so thac all the seeds became completely covered with 

 acid, water was allowed to run into the vessel, at the 

 end of a time depending on the kind of seed, and 

 the contents were poured quickly into a strainer and 

 washed with running water for five minutes, or until 

 the seed was entirely free from acid. It was found 

 that the seed may be planted immediately or allowed 

 to dry before being planted; the former process is the 

 better one in the case of small lots of seed. 



In trials of the effects of storage on the treated 

 seed, it was found that, at the end of four months, the 



