THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



m 



THE INCRUSTATION OF CEREAL AND OTHER SEEDS. 



By F. R. de la Trehonnais 



Formerly, when science was still in its infancy, expe- 

 rience to a certain extent, but routine especially, were 

 the only guides of agriculturists in their modes of pre- 

 paring the ground for the reception of the seed. Farm- 

 yard manures and bare fallows were the only means 

 of restoring the spent energies of the soil ; and these 

 were then, and are even now to a great extent, indis- 

 criminately resorted to, without any regard to the che- 

 mical constitution of the soil, or the requirements of the 

 plants that are to grow upon it. Analytic science, and 

 the wonderful discoveries of vegetable physiology, have 

 of late years thrown a great deal of light upon the sub- 

 ject of manure, its mode of application to the soil, and 

 its assimilation by the plants. And yet, practically, 

 little progress has been made. We have superphosphate, 

 it is true : we see a great many kinds of artificial manures 

 daily advertised in our agricultural papers; but, after all, 

 the progress we have accomplished is by no means ade- 

 quate to the strides which science has made in the analytic 

 knowledge of manures, in the exact appreciation of 

 their fertilizing qualities, and their action upon vegeta- 

 tion in various plants. We still cart away to our fields 

 the same ponderous loads of (arm-yard dung, a large per- 

 centage of which is of no earthly use, and can only be 

 regarded as the liuge vehicle of a very minute proportion 

 of ammonia and alkaline salts. Even guqno and super- 

 phosphate of lime are rncumbered with a large propor- 

 tion of useless ingredients, all of which are costly to 

 purchase and cumbersome, and therefore expensive to 

 carry. Besides, what a large proportion of the manure 

 which we lay over our fields is utterly lost to the crop we 

 want to grow ! what a large pcr-centage is eaten up by 

 noxious weeds, or disseminated through a part of the 

 soil untouched by the ramifications of the roots, and 

 therefore immediately useless ! On the other hand, 

 we know, from clear demonstration, what the sub- 

 stances are which each kind of crops draws from the 

 soil ; we know to a fraction the quantity of each of those 

 substances respectively ; and when we come to compare 

 their aggregate weight at per acre, with the quantity of 

 manure which we have laid over that extent of ground, 

 we are astounded at the difference in bulk and weight. 



II. 



If a plant is dried and burnt, the little pinch of ashes 

 that remains, after complete combustion, represents 

 the amount of mineral substances which the plant has 

 drawn from the soil. The rest, which has evaporated in 

 the air by the process of combustion, represents those 

 constituent parts which the plant has derived from the 

 air. Chemistry tells us exactly what substances the 

 ashes contain, and in what proportionate quantities. It 

 is then obvious, that either the soil or the manures put 

 on it, or, as is more generally the case, both combined, 

 have supplied those substances to the plant, without which 

 it could not have arrived at maturity. But here we may 

 well pause, and ask ourselves whether, in order to ad- 

 minister to the plant so small a quantity of matters — 

 another and a more simple mode cannot be found ; for 

 that quantity, though it be multiplied by the number 

 of plants in an acre of ground, still remains compara- 

 tively minute in the extreme, when we compare it with 

 the bulk and weight of the 20 or 25 cubic yards of dung 

 we have laid over it, besides the pulverulent artificial 



manure or guano we have drilled with our seed. 

 Again, if we calculate the cost of that manure and the 

 value of the labour which its use has necessitated, we 

 find that the little heap of ashes which has been the 

 result, has cost us an immense sum of money ; in fact, 

 a much higher sum than the pure chemicals of which it 

 consists could be bought for in the trade. 

 III. 

 Hence, the general tendency of efforts on the part of 

 both scientific men and practical agriculturists towards 

 concentrated manures, that is, diminishing the bulk of 

 useless substances, serving merely as vehicles to the 

 really fertilizing element, in order to render them more 

 portable, and more energetic, proportionately with their 

 bulk. Abstractedly, this is evidently the goal of our 

 progressive ideas in agriculture ; that is, the simplifica- 

 tion of all the means, either in labour or manures — the 

 one by concentration of fertilizing energies ; the other by 

 means of ingenious machinery, and especially the use of 

 steam-power in field as well as barn operations. It is 

 true to a certain extent that, apart from the primary 

 purpose of restoring the exhausted fertility of the soil, 

 stable and other bulky manure have other advantages, 

 mechanical and thermal ; for instance, in dividing a 

 stiff soil, and imparting to it a higher temperature 

 by decomposition from fermentation. But, with tho- 

 rough drainage, these advantages have become less 

 depending from the action of stable manure; and I 

 have no doubt but, as we progress with lime, the corn- 

 growing farmer will no longer be obliged to have recourse 

 to the present troublesome and expensive mode of manu- 

 facturing his manure. A more definite delineation will 

 divide the operations of the corn-growing from those of 

 the breeding and grazing agriculturists, by which the 

 pursuits of the farmer will become less complicated, 

 demanding a smaller capital, diminishing his risks, 

 and materially adding to his gain. Every farmer in 

 England knows well that the lean stock he is obliged to 

 feed on his farm brings him no immediate profit ; and, 

 were it not for the manure, he would incur a positive 

 loss — setting for nothing the labour, anxiety, risks of 

 mortality, and the locking up of capital, which the 

 feeding of lean stock entails. 

 IV. 

 From the foregoing preliminary observations, we are 

 naturally led to ask the question, How are these disad- 

 vantages to be removed ? How are we to turn scientific 

 discoveries to a practical account ? How are we to 

 concentrate our manures, and simplify their fertilizing 

 constituents, so as to reduce them to the bulk of the 

 amount actually assimilated by the crop ; and, having 

 succeeded in this, how are we to apply them ? 



A few weeks ago I communicated to this paper the 

 translation of a very remarkable memoir upon the nutri- 

 tion of plants, by the celebrated Boussingault, describing 

 a series of experiments which clearly demonstrated the 

 possibility of enabling a plant to accomplish all the phases 

 of its existence, viz., its germination, normal growth, 

 bloom, i'ructification, and maturity, in pure calcined 

 sand, in which were introduced pure phosphate of lime, 

 vegetable ashes, and nitrate of potash, which contain the 

 mineral constituents of the plant selected for the expert- 

 ment — IlcUantlms urgophylhis. Here, it is very 

 obvious that the soil was essentially used only as a 



