154 [Senate 



Nothing is sooner lost than the hartshorn in an open smelling-bottlcj 

 or a large share of the ammonia in free urine in a warm atmosphere. 

 Charcoal and gypsum will absorb it in large quantities, and give it 

 out to the roots of plants as their wants require. In feeding plants, 

 great judgment should be exercised. At least one-half of the food 

 fed out to them in the shape of stable and barn-yard manure, is en- 

 tirely lost. It escapes into the air, or is dissolved prematurely, and 

 carried like the potash in water running through a leach, beyond the 

 reach of your hungry, if not starving plants. 



I have just separated a half pound of wheat-flour into its proxi- 

 mate elements of starch and gluten. The gluten I have in my hand. 

 It is nearly identical with animal muscle. It forms from 7 to 35 per 

 cent of the bulk of wheat kernels. The more glutt n flour contains, 

 the more good bread a given number of pounds will make. A bar- 

 rel of flour rich in gluten, will make 10 per cent more of bread than 

 one which is nearly all starch. Gluten will bear far more water than 

 starch. The quantity of this meat-forming principle in wheat, de- 

 pends in a good degree on the quantity of nitrogen in the soil where 

 the wheat is grown. 



Prof. Emmons made some interesting experiments, illustrative of 

 soils. He also exhibited some beautiful specimens of the separation 

 of starch and gluten in kernels of wheat and corn ; and also of the 

 phosphates in the latter grain. 



At the sixth meeting, Mr. O'Reilly briefly alluded to the diminish- 

 ed average of the crops, even in the best wheat growing regions of 

 the state, as furnishing strong reasons for energetic action in adopting- 

 improved modes of cultivation, so as to produce better crops, while 

 renovating the impoverished soil. He stated the results of inquiries 

 which he had made from several of the most intelligent wheat buyers 

 and flour manufacturers — foremost among whom was Hervey Ely, of 

 Rochester, who had furnished him with some data, and would furnish 

 more, concerning the condition of the wheat crops for each year, in 

 quality, quantity and price, during the last thirty years — Mr. Ely 

 having been one of the earliest, as he has been one of the most ex- 

 tensive flour manufacturers in the Genesee country — commencing with 

 the second mill established at Rochester, when that place was yet 

 nearly a wilderness, in 1814. No flour was manufactured at Ro- 

 chester, except the grists for local use, until 1814, when a few hun- 

 dred barrels were sent to the troops on the Niagara frontier ; which 

 was followed the next year, after the peace with England, by the ex- 

 portation of a few hundred barrels to Montreal and other Canadian 

 ports — the business increasing since then in a ratio that has finally 

 rendered Rochester capable of packing more flour annually than any 

 other city in the world. Such has beeen the depreciation of the 

 wheat crops, owing to exhaustion of the soil, consequent on ill- 

 judged farming, (said Mr. O'R.,) that, extraordinary as the assertion 

 may seem, the product of the wheat lands between the Seneca lake 



