588 The Lois Weedon Plan of Groioing Wheat. 



too, that the more recent recommendation, namely, that of 

 moulding up the growing crop in June, was only adopted in the 

 last year of the experiment (1855), and then with little effect. 

 But as the earlier recorded success at Lois Weedon was obtained 

 without this — however great the improvement, as undoubtedly 

 it is — it certainly was not an essential in the original plan. 



With these unfavourable circumstances admitted then, we 

 again ask, what is the rationale of the failure, which these cir- 

 cumstances have had their share in causing ? Was the available 

 mineral food for the crop deficient in this turned-up raw clay 

 subsoil, with the good upper staple, weathered perhaps for cen- 

 turies, now turned below for the descending roots to play in ? 

 Or, was it rather that the upper staple being now buried, or 

 much intermixed with the subsoil, there was rendered available 

 from its own, and from fresh atmospheric resources, less of the 

 normally atmospheric food of the crop ; and that the raw sub- 

 soil, but recently exposed to direct atmospheric influences, 

 was able, so to speak, to prepare for the plant, and to accumulate 

 for it in an available form, also less of the normally atmospheric 

 food of plants ? 



On communicating our failure after four years' trial to the 

 Rev. Mr. Smith, he suggested the probability that it was due to 

 a want of a sufficient amount of the mineral constituents of the 

 wheat-plant being rendered soluble and available ; and that, in 

 this case, the requisite supply of mineral matter should be made 

 up by manure ; believing that then, the soil having become 

 pulverised and porous, there would be an abundant supply of 

 orpanic substance provided by the atmosphere. 



That the soil in question was not relatively deficient in soluble 

 and available mineral food, and that, under certain circum- 

 stances, there was provided an abundant supply of organic food 

 for a very much larger crop, was proved much more conclusively by 

 the produce of the common fallow acre than any analysis of the 

 soil could prove it. To test, however, in another way, what was 

 the nature of the deficiency of the two-acre plot, trenched to a 

 depth of 14 to 15 inches and afterwards forked, it was, after the 

 harvest of 1855, divided into four portions, in such a manner that 

 each of the four had an equal proportion of the trenched and forked 

 fallow and of the stubble ground. The whole was then ploughed 

 and prepared for sowing in the ordinary way : one portion was 

 left unmanured, the second received mineral manure only, the 

 third ammoniacal salts only, and the fourth both mineral con- 

 stituents and ammoniacal salts. All four of the plots, together 

 with half of the common fallow acre by their side, were then 

 drilled with about two bushels of seed per acre in the ordinary 

 way. 



