318 Ayricultural Chemistry. 



the imperfection of mj manure, and I expressed my regret that 

 the idea which I had intended to realise had taken the form of 

 a mercantile speculation. {^Letters on Chemistry, 3rd edition, 

 1851, p. 482.)_ 



After the third edition of my book had appeared, in 1843, no 

 man in Europe ever imagined, up to 1847, that I had taught, that 

 the produce of soils is pivportional to the mineral constituents sup- 

 plied in the i7iajiure alone, or that I had advised faryners to yive no 

 ammonia in the manure applied to grain crops. Men of science 

 and agriculturists were aware, up to the period when the first 

 papers of Mr. Laives appeared, that I had laboured to direct their 

 attention to certain fixed conditions of fertility in soils, the im- 

 portance of which I pointed out the more strongly, the less they 

 had been previously attended to. The effect of ammonia was 

 known and established. Whether, in doing this, I committed an 

 error, the reader can now decide for himself. All that Messrs. 

 Lawes and Gilbert have collected from European and American 

 journals in favour of their views of my doctrine is but a very 

 small fraction of the literature which has appeared concerning it, 

 and is nothing more than the echo of their own mistakes. It is not 

 worth while to throw away a word more on these misrepresenta- 

 tions nor on the incomplete letter which I am said to have written 

 to the 'Revue Scientifique et Industrielle,' in Paris, in 1847 (a 

 periodical, the editor of which is unknown to me even by name), 

 and the end of which alone has a rational meaning, " that, as 

 soon as we can dispense with the bulky farmyard manure by 

 the use of artificial preparations, the productive powers of our 

 fields are in our hands." * 



The experiments, published by Mr. Lawes in 1847, had ori- 

 ginally for their object to test the efficacy of the manure pre- 

 pared according to my prescription by Messrs. Muspratt and Co. 

 of Liverpool. 



Mr. Lawes calls the testing the efficacy of these manures 

 testing the accuracy of my theory. The facts which showed 

 that the produce of his experimental fields was not increased by 

 these manures, he calls proofs. They prove, according to him, 

 that manuring with the mineral constituents of wheat had no 

 effect; and he concluded from this, that the supply of these con- 



* During my visit to my friend Dr. Daubeny at Oxford, I became acquainted 

 ■with Mr. Proctor of Bristol, a manufacturer of manures, who came to Oxford to 

 tell me that he was indebted to my book for the success of his manui-es. He pays 

 attention to the geological quality of the soils, and regulates accordingly, in 

 accordance with my principles, the composition of his manures ; and on his own 

 fields he has obtained astonishing results. He has been fortunate enough, in 

 every case, to satisfy the consumer. I caused my son Hermann, who is a prac- 

 tical agriculturist, to travel to Bristol ; and what he saw there agrees perfectly 

 with the preceding statement, communicated to me by Mr. Proctor. 



