190 PROCEEDINGS OF THE CHEMICAL DEPARTMENT. 



of little use without capital, but capital without the other is not 

 much better. What is wanted is a tenantry with both skill and 

 capital, and as it may be safely averred that not one-half of the 

 tenantry have these in combination, while the rest have not 

 more than one of them, and often neither, there is a good deal 

 to be done before agriculture is on a right footing. The most 

 hopeful class of farmers are those with skill, who may be a little 

 weak in the requisite capital. Such men will thrive and soon 

 make capital under a fair or rather moderate rent ; and there is 

 no surer way to advance the agriculture of a district than by 

 keeping the rents at fair rates, provided the men are good. Sup- 

 posing the rent is a little easy, the difference between that and 

 a rack rent, or a rent that cannot be racked out of the land, is 

 not lost to the proprietor, for such a tenant applies all his surplus 

 to the improvement of his farm and to the accumulation of stock 

 upon it. It is almost as necessary to the proprietor that his 

 tenant should have capital as to the tenant kimself. If capital, 

 therefore, is the desideratum among the tenantry of this county, as 

 it is of many districts in Scotland, it is hard to see how they are 

 to be benefited by a change that would involve them in a 

 diminution of the capital at present applied to their business, 

 which would be the practical result of the abolition of the 

 security which the landlord at present holds. 



PKOCEEDLNGS OF THE CHEMICAL DEPAETMENT. 



By Thomas Anderson, M.D., F.R.S.E., Chemist to the Society. 



ANALYSIS OF THE SOILS AND SUBSOILS ON WHICH THE 

 FIELD EXPERIMENTS OF 1866 WERE MADE. 



In making the analysis of a soil, the object which should be 

 held in view, is not merely to determine with the necessary ex- 

 actitude the total quantity of each of its constituents, but also to 

 obtain some evidence of the state of combination in which they 

 exist in it. Experiment has shown that a soil may contain 

 abundance of some of the most important and essential elements 

 of plants, and yet remain unfruitful, in consequence of their being 

 in the form of compounds, which are either entirely undecompo- 

 sable, or so little prone to change, that they are not liberated in 

 sufficient quantity to have any practical value ; while another, 

 which is comparatively poor in the same substances, may be ex- 

 tremely fertile, owing to the ready accessibility of the smaller 

 quantity found in them. Most soils contain a portion of their 

 constituents in a state in which they are unable to act as nutri- 

 ment to the plants which grow upon them ; and the remainder 

 may, and often does, exist in several forms, some more and some 



