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f ME TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. [April i, 1886. 



Tbe hill tribes beiug now reduced to order, there 

 is but shght danger to be apprehendpd in life or 

 property from them, and the inhabitants of the<lis- 

 trict, thou^'h not more remarkable for general honesty 

 than o:h r pijople, very rarely int'jrfcrc wiih a 

 European.— SvNTESG. 



= « . 



THE NATURE AND FUNCTIONS OF 

 BliVNURE, 

 Its value, and tbe various modes of its application, 

 have been staa ting themes of dispiilati'm among 

 horticulturists ever since the history of gardening has 

 been recorded. All who have read with any degree 

 of attention the various theories which have from time 

 to time been puljlished, must have been struck, and 

 also considerably puzzled, by the great difference of 

 opinion amongst those who profess to know something 

 about the subject. A. thinks there is nothing like 

 ashes or lime ; B. pins his faith on bone-dnst and 

 superphosphate ; 0. has no doubt that there is nothing 

 like muck — stable manm'e being worth all the new- 

 fangled fertilisers that foolish experimentalists have 

 invented. His father and his great-grandfather, and 

 all his ancestors, were of the same opinion, and therefore 

 he must be right. D., fortified by long experience, in 

 which all his neighbours have participated, hohls m-iii- 

 fully to the practice that liquid manure is the one 

 thing needful to successful gardening. E. tellsus that 

 he made no money until he used guano, which has 

 converted his barren soil into miracles of fertility, and 

 ho therefore looks with pity on all those who do not 

 follow iu bis footsteps, and as old fogies, who are 

 tolling on in the dark, ignorant of the true remedy for 

 the infertility of their gai-dens. And thus these contro- 

 versies have gone on from year to year— no one "-on- 

 vinced by the arguments or the experience of others, 

 but each adhering to his own theory and his own practice 

 more strongly than ever. 



Now. with the increased knowledge of the nineteenth 

 century, it seems to us that all these various opinions 

 and practices are equally right under certain circum- 

 stances, and wrong under other circumstances. No 

 hard-And-fast rule can be laid down for the horticulturist 

 any more than it can for the farmer ; each case must 

 be considered on its own merit, according to inherent 

 soil-fertility, locality, and the climatal condition with 

 which the gardener has to deal. 



Since, then, every manure has its use and its value 

 under given conditions, the great aim of the practical 

 and thoughtful gardener should be to ascertain exactly 

 what those conditions are, and the special circumstance 

 under which their application can be made prolit- 



able. 



Science has demonstrated very conclusively that every 

 species of plant, whether growiii" wild or cultivated by 

 the gardener, has its own peculiar chemical composition, 

 consisting of a greater or lesser number of elementary 

 substances united iu well ascTtained and definite pro- 

 portions. It is also well understood by the horticulturid 

 chemist that plants have no power inherent in them 

 of creating matter, but that their vitality oidy enables 

 them to select and combine such materials asare pre. 

 Rented to their feeding organs from without. The only 

 sources of supply are the substances within reach of 

 their absorbing or feeding organs, and these substances 

 must therefore be contained in the soil or the atmo- 

 sphere immediately contiguous to them. 



The essential elemtnts that are supplied by the 

 atmosphere are carbon, which plants take from the 

 carbonic acid of the air; oxygen and hydrogen, which 

 come from the air to the soil ami are absorbed by 

 the roots of the plant, and a part of thi; nitrogen. 



The essential iugredients that nnist come from the 

 soil are potash, lime, magnesia, iron, ph'j.sphoric acid, 

 sulphuric acid, a small amount of chlorine, perhaps a 

 minute quantity of silicj, and, tinally, considerable 

 nitrogen. 



Consequently, in order that our plants may ?row 

 and thrive, they must have at the disposal of their 

 roots iu the soil a suBicient quantity of each of these 

 ingre lients of their food. If any one of the more 

 important constituents- potash, lime, phosphnrio acid, 

 or nitrogen— be deficient, the whole plant suffers, 



If we have a gardener especially eloquent on the 

 virtues of any particular manure, to the exclusion of 

 all others, we may be sure that he is the cultivator 

 of soil rich in most of the elements of plants, but 

 deficient in one or to of them ; the addition of these 

 nii^siiig substances will then pro-luce truly astoui-shing 

 results, and those who w itut:ss them can hardly be 

 p^rsuadjd fhat what has proved so uselul to them- 

 selv s can be usc"i.l lu the hands of others. 



Every cultivable soil, however exhausted it may be, 

 is cnpanie of supplying more or less of these essential 

 e'ements oT plant-food, which it derives from the 

 fUbris of pre-existing vegetation. This is called its 

 inherent fertility, or uaturd strength. To this im- 

 portant point it is (mr intention to return shortly, 

 putting before our readers the best ascertained means 

 by which the fertility of our gardens and fields may 

 be maintained. — Gardeners' Chronicle. 



NoHTH QuKENStAND. — Reports are reaching us of some- 

 thing more than didness and depression in that once 

 fiourishing sugar centre — Mackay. Hard working men 

 and small lanil owners are, as usual, the first to feel 

 and succumb thereto ; au<l we learn with regret that 

 some small farmers are already so pinched that they 

 have to part with their holdings at great sacrifices to 

 enable them to obtain the wherewithal to decamp and 

 start something elsewhere. Everything is working 

 into the hands of the monopolist, and the expressed 

 policy with which the present Ministry started is 

 being I'eserved. While the sugar industry was flour- 

 ishing small farmers could live, either by cultivating 

 suifar-cane or other needful crops to supply the wants 

 of a thrifty population and their working animals and 

 stock. Besides this, if necessary, they coidd formerly 

 always get remunerative employment, and never needed 

 to have any idle time. Now, however, labour is' no- 

 where to be had, only the bare necessaries of life will 

 sell, and all that can clear out are doing so, being 

 compelled to shift or starve. These are facts which 

 speak for themselves, and we wonder whercnuto it 

 will grow ; for at present there is no pi-ospeot of re- 

 lief appearing within range of our poUtical horizon. 

 — Queensland Agricvlturist. 



Ages of German Forest Trees. — A writer in the 

 Forstliclwii Blntter expresses the opinion that the 

 nssnmed age of 1000 years of German forest trees 

 is a myth— that, even in the case of so-called historical 

 trees, an age higher than between 700 and SOO years 

 has not been proved, ami that no German tree 

 reaches that age in a healthy state. Trees of such 

 antiquity are always hollow, and continue to exist 

 only as ruins. As regards the limit of health of 

 trees, it may be assumed that much depi:nds, not 

 only on the kind of wood, but also on the cliifiatc 

 anti the soil. The highest age which trees reach in 

 a healthy condition is found in foliferous trees, not 

 in coniferous trees After that age has been reached, 

 coniferous die off, wdiiLst foliated may continue to 

 vegetate for some time after having reached the 

 limit of health. The highest age, fouiul by counting 

 the annual rings, is between 500 and 700 years, ar.d 

 this age is reached by the fir in the Bohmcrwald 

 and the pine in Finland and Sweden. The next 

 highest age is reached by the silver fir, which, in 

 the Bohnierwald, was found to be 129 years. The 

 larch reaches the highest age of '27 1 years (in Bavaria). 

 Of foliferous trees, the oak appears to resist the 

 longest, the oldest known specimen (near AscbafFen- 

 burg), a h'llm oak, counting 410 years. In the case 

 of the common oak, the oldest specimens, in which 

 the heart was beginning to decay, being 515 and 

 320 years old. But the common oak grows much 

 tbicker tham the holm oak. The oldest red beech 

 trees have been found near .Vsebaffenburg ( 2 15 years) 

 and AVeisswasser |22G years i. Tbe luaximnm ages 

 of the other kinds of Gorman trees arc as follows : 

 Ash, 170 years; elm, 130; birch, 160-200: asp. 210; 

 red alder, 145 ; mountain maple, 224 years The tree 

 most numerous-ly represented amongst historical trees — 

 the lime tree — is found the least in the i ollectiou 

 to wood of old and oldest trees. This may be due 

 of the fact that old and healthy lime are most 

 scarce. — Fifhl. 



