504 The Lois Weedon Plan of Groxciug Wheat. 



" Ask them plainly, whether the soil and subsoil of clays and loams, gene- 

 rally though not universally, do or do not contain all that is wanted as 

 mineral food for the wheat ? Ask them, further, whether tillage, and pul- 

 verisation, and gradual exposure, and annual fallows, will not render soluble 

 a sufficiency of these substances for your annual need ? If they reply, ' Yes,' 

 but demur to the plan, and add, that in time it will exhaust the capital of 

 the land, — ask them once more, ' In how long a time ? ' And if they answer, 

 ' AVhy, in some cases, in a thousand years or more, in others five hundred, and 

 in some a hundred ;' your rejoinder must be a smile ; for you would surely feel, 

 that even a hundred years' supply should satisfy living man." 



Baron Liebig, in the article above referred to, also indig- 

 nantly repudiates the notion that the cause of the efficacy of 

 fallow is to be looked for in the increase of the amount of 

 ammonia in the soil, or that any specially predominant influence 

 v/as to be ascribed to the ammonia which the soil acquires in 

 fallow. The Rev. Mr. Smith, on the other hand, speaking of 

 the '•^ orr/anic'^ food — "carbonic and nitric acid and ammonia" 

 — asks, " do not the pulverised intervals of the wheat, in the 

 annual fallow, absorb and retain it for use ? " 



It is rather curious, that, with such vital inconsistencies of 

 principle and opinion, the wheat-growing operations and success 

 at Lois Weedon, and Mr. Smith's interpretation of them, should 

 frequently have been brought forward in confirmation of the 

 peculiar views of Baron Liebig. The means by which Mr. 

 Smith obtains his large crops of 7'oots also, have recently been 

 adduced * as refutation of the views on such points emanating 

 from Rothamsted. But the writer in question appears, as the 

 rule, to misstate the extent and bearing of every conclusion, and 

 even fact, which may happen to come from Rothamsted. For 

 our own part, careful observation and inquiry on more than one 

 visit to the spot, as well as the perusal of Mr. Smith's publica- 

 tions, lead us to say, that we know of no experience more cal- 

 culated to confirm the opinions we have held in this Journal 

 regarding the requirements of growth of full crops of wheat on the 

 one hand, and of roots on the other, than that at Lois Weedon. 



But to return. The question is of vital importance to prac- 

 tical agriculture, however little it may interest or affect the 

 researches of " chemists and men of science," — what is the cha- 

 racteristic nature of the exhaustion induced by the growth of the 

 most important crop of the farm ? And, we may add, — whether 

 or not soils generally, or soils of any particular class, are compe- 

 tent, without injury, to sustain an annual extraction of mineral 

 constituents, and to liberate, or (either by themselves or by the 

 plants growing on them) newly to acquire from the atmos- 



* Journal of Agriculture of the Highland and Agricultural Society of Scotland, 

 July 1856. 



