68 Cincinnati Horticultural Society. [February, 



"believed will resuscitate the leanest clayey soil, and render it loose, 

 and perfectly friable, and profitably productive. Indeed a gentleman, 

 a very intelligent farmer, informed me, that under this system of rota- 

 tion he had so improved a field of twelve acres (upon which he had 

 expended fifty dollars for putting it into wheat, and after all his labor 

 did not receive enough in return to pay the first outlay), that he raised 

 forty-three bushels of excellent wheat to the acre. 



After all that can be said, there are many things to observe, in all 

 these processes, which must be left to the judgment and experience of the 

 cultivator. Much importance is attached to the selection of the best 

 seed, and the kind of seed best suited to the soil. It is certain that 

 there are some kinds of white corn that will mature better, and grow 

 better, on a thin, clayey soil, than the large yellow. So of wheat. The 

 Mediterranean wheat will do better on a thin soil, than on a deep, rich 

 soil ; while it is the reverse with the Genesee. The Mediterranean 

 wheat, on a deep, rich soil, runs to straw and will be sure to fall. 



In adopting a judicious system of cropping, a degree of judgment and 

 experience is required which few cultivators possess. And it will be 

 found that this very subject is replete with the profoundest principles of 

 science, requiring a most rigid and exact series of analyses, and experi- 

 ments, fully to develop, elucidate, and relider practical. Such will form 

 an important item in the course of instruction in this Institution as 

 soon as the Farm Department shall have been fully opened up, and the 

 Laboratory, now begun, shall have been completed. And even when 

 science shall have performed her full part in laying down a judicious 

 system of rotation, much will depend upon the manner in which the 

 different processes shall be executed ; for the very best rotation will 

 be of little value, if the processes belonging to it are imperfectly and 

 unseasonably executed. 



Gunpowder. — Some of the effects of ignited gunpowder are wonderful. 

 When it is heaped up in the open air and inflamed, there is no report, 

 and but little effect produced. A small quantity opened and ignited in 

 a room forces the air outward, so as to blow out the windows ; but the 

 same quantity confined within a barrel, within the same room, and ignited, 

 tears in pieces, and sets on fire, the whole house. Count Kumford con- 

 fined within a mortar one-twentieth part of an ounce of powder, and 

 placed upcm it a 24 lb. cannon ; he then closed up every opening as com- 

 pletely as possible, and fired the charge, which burst the mortar with a 

 tremendous explosion, and lifted up its enormous weight. 



