406 PROCEEDINGS OF THE CHEMICAL DEPARTMENT. 



pear. Nos. 8, 9, and 10, of the second section were exceptions 

 to this, and all good. No. 11 of the second section was much 

 diseased and inferior, while the corresponding plot on the first 

 was superior. 



On examining the rest of the field, Mr. Bowie found local 

 disease in all parts of it, but nothing compared with what it was 

 on the part occupied by the second section of the experiments, 

 where the disease may be said to have almost concentrated itself. 

 The soil of the field being remarkably uniform, Mr. Bowie was 

 at first at a loss to account for the phenomenon, but at last he 

 remembered that the wheat crop of 1865 had been cut with a 

 heavy three-horse Burgess & Key reaper, which at first, and to 

 a certain breadth, cut round the field, but afterwards the crop 

 being lodged in some places, it was cut on two sides only, the 

 machine continuing to go round the other two sides without 

 cutting, which produced a much trodden pathway along the 

 latter. It was then remembered that a large proportion of the 

 second section plots were on this pathway. Mr. Bowie has no 

 doubt that this, and the mild winter which prevented the due 

 pulverisation of the soil, is the cause of the remarkable differ- 

 ence thus observed ; and he remarks that he has repeatedly 

 traced a tendency to finger-and-toe in the trail of a reaper which 

 has frequently gone over the same ground. 



There can be no doubt that these facts sufficiently explain 

 the peculiarities observed in all cases, except the No. 11 of the 

 second section, which remains anomalous. The observation is 

 also extremely interesting, as it shows what trifling circum- 

 stances may affect the results of agricultural experiments. Mr. 

 Bowie remarks that the season has been most unfavourable to 

 the turnip, from the persistent drought and prolonged frosts ex- 

 tending far into the summer — for there were hail and ice between 

 the 15th and 21st June — which were just the conditions likely to 

 produce disease ; and it was only the moisture and warmth of the 

 latter part of the year which brought the produce up to the point 

 it actually reached. 



Mr. Bowie not having numbered the bulbs, nor weighed the 

 leaves of his experimental plots, has thought it better to give his 

 results in a form different from that adopted for the other experi- 

 ments ; and I, therefore, give his tables just as he supplied them. 



