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II. — Lois Weedon Husbandry. By the Rev. S, Smith. 



I AM deeply indebted to Mr. Lawes for his paper in this Journal 

 '' On the Growth of Wheat by the Lois Weedon System on the 

 Rothamsted Soil." 



The design of the paper is admirable. For, great things are 

 promised to him who farms upon the system under review, — 

 even a large profit, with wheat at 40^., or as low as 355. a quar- 

 ter ; and it was right that care should be taken by some compe- 

 tent person that in such a matter no one be misled. 



But, not only is the wheat crop to be thus profitable : it is to 

 be grown year after year without manure on the same acre or 

 acres of land, as the case may be. So that if a man, farming 

 after this fashion, have 300 acres of ploughed land, and keep 

 the self- same 100 acres continuously in wheat, he has only two- 

 thirds of his farm to manure. 



For eleven years this plan of growing wheat has been in suc- 

 cessful operation at Lois Weedon, — with an excellent promise 

 for crop number twelve ; and before I notice the Rothamsted 

 experiment it may be well to examine the cause of this success. 



1. The land at Lois Weedon devoted to wheat, is wheat land; 

 one piece being wheat land naturally, the other being made so 

 by marling. The mineral food for the wheat plant is thus 

 secured, existing as it does in land of this quality and condition. 



2. But, as a sufficiency of this mineral food might not be in a 

 prepared state for assimilation without exposure to the solvents 

 of the atmosphere, a portion of the subsoil, as it is required, is 

 brought to the surface to have a winter and summer fallow. 



3. To secure this annual fallow, without the loss of the annual 

 crop of wheat from the same acre of land, the crop is grown in 

 strips of three rows of wheat (or of two, as the case may demand), 

 a foot from row to row ; a fallow interval of 3 feet running 

 between each triple or double row ; the strip of one year's wheat 

 being the fallow for the next, and so on alternately from year to 

 year. This fallow interval is limited to 3 feet ; because, with 

 more, the bulk of the produce of wheat would be greatly di- 

 minished ; with less, it could not be worked. 



4. The bringing up of the subsoil of the intervals, however, is 

 not enough : the conditions of the system are, — that this ex- 

 posed subsoil be literally pulverized, — actually broken to atoms 

 and brought down to dust, and then mixed with the pulverized 

 staple. 



A few moments' consideration will show that this is at the root 

 of the system, — is its very life, — without which it dies. It is, in 

 fact, in the stead of manure. It may be said to create a certain 

 portion of the nourishment of the wheat crop ; for, the undersoil 



