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THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



acre was nothing very extraordinary ; and when he 

 considered that, if they carried out the Lois-Weedon 

 system, they must neglect the growth of roots and 

 clovers, from which they produced their meat, he ques- 

 tioned whether they would be doing right in losing 

 those crops, and going after another, which certainly, 

 so far as the last few years were concerned, had by no 

 means paid them so well." Mr. Wilson, who 

 had also visited Lois Weedon, although some years 

 since, " presumed that everybody had arrived at 

 the same conclusion, that the system was utterly 

 impracticable in this country." Mr. Fisher Hobbs 

 said " there could be no advantage in it to the 

 practical farmer;" and the Chairman thought " put- 

 ting it into operation on a large scale would be a per- 

 fect absurdity." But, however decisive, the discussion 

 itself was comparatively tame : more so than it should 

 have been, and for this reason — nearly half the deputa- 

 tion that went to Lois Weedon, on the part of the Club, 

 never appeared at the meeting. The absentees, more- 

 over, were unfortunately those who might have given a 

 little zest and interest to the debate. Mr. Owen Wallis, 

 Mr. William Shaw, and Mr. Gray, of Courteen, all 

 Northamptonshire men, might have said something as 

 to the reception the system had met with in its own 

 "native" county — what the farmers there thought of 



it — and, as we believe is the case, how wheat has 

 been grown in some other parts of Northampton- 

 shire for quite as long a period as it has been at 

 Weedon, not only without manure, but also without 

 the continual " fiddling about" the system seems so 

 imperatively to demand. Of course, to be of any 

 general use, the Members composing these visitation 

 companies must hold themselves prepared to speak 

 hereafter to what they have seen, or the very object of 

 their inspection becomes comparatively nullified. The 

 same thing happened after the Silsoe Allotment day, 

 when scai'cely a tithe of the party turned up at the 

 Club Meeting. It is only to be hoped that at the 

 gathering in June, when the subject of Steam Cultiva- 

 tion comes on again, we shall hear more of what the 

 visitors saw and thought of " the other Mr. Smith." 



However, to fill up the idle hours of a "generally 

 useful" gardener or groom, or to teach the young idea 

 of the agricultural class of a National School, the Lois 

 Weedon System may answer well enough. But, with 

 labour in the demand it is, and must continue ; with 

 wheat at present prices; and mutton and beef not to 

 be altogether ignored, we question very much whether 

 the farmer, like the charity- boy when he got to the end 

 of the alphabet, will think it worth while " going 

 through so much to learn so little." 



PRINCIPLES OF MANURING. 



Lawes' and Liebig's Controversy on the Principles of Manuring popularly explained. — 

 The Rothamsted Experiments with Special Manures described. — Instances given 

 of consecutive Corn Growing both without and with Manure. 



Of all the new faiths entertained of late years by the 

 modern husbandman, none is more lively than that 

 which attributes to nitrogenous manuring a specific 

 virtue of fertility. To this belief, two circumstances have 

 conspired : First, the continuous flow of argument in 

 favour of the expedient, which for many years has issued 

 from Rothamsted ; and secondly, and chiefly, the 

 seeming success with which the actual use of dressings 

 rich in nitrogen has in very many instances been at- 

 tended. 



Yet, in the midst of this general confidence, a warn- 

 ing voice has been proclaiming the practice to be alike 

 spoliative and ruinous— spoliative, in as far as the tenant 

 thereby procures a fore-stalled profit from the soil; 

 ruinous, in as far as the land will revert to the owner in 

 a beggared condition. 



" The farmer, who cultivates land which is not per- 

 manently his property, has the greatest interest in 

 obtaining from the land, during his occupancy, the 

 highest possible produce. The condition in which he 

 leaves the land to his successor is no object of his care. 

 For this farmer, ammoniacal salts and manures very 

 rich in nitrogen, which he supplies from without, are 



the best and most profitable manures. On the other 

 hand, the proprietor of the land has the greatest interest 

 that his land should continue in the same state of fer- 

 tility in which he has handed it over to the farmer. 

 The use of manure rich in nitrogen by the farmer 

 prepares for the proprietor the ruin of his land. The 

 greater the quantity of active mineral constituents ex- 

 tracted from the soil in the crops by the use of such 

 manures, and the less the quantity of these mineral con- 

 stituents restored to the soil in these manures, the more 

 rapidly does the capital of the proprietor diminish in 

 vahie by this system of exhaustion." — Liebig's paper on 

 "Agricultural Chemistry;" Royal Agricultural Journal, 

 volume xvii. " A field which, by manuring with 

 these last-mentioned salts" {i. e., salts rich in nitrogen) 

 " has produced a larger crop for one or more years is 

 thereby impaired in fertility for iatme crops."— Liebig's 

 letters on "Modern Agriculture," p. 81, " The ap- 

 parently remunerative employment of these means on 

 many fields may last for a long time, ere the agricul- 

 turist becomes aware of the injury he is doing himself, 

 by neglecting to return the mineral substances removed 

 by his crops ; but the longer he continues by them to 



