616 The Lois Weedon Plan of Groicing Wheat. 



peculiar influences of tlie sun's rays, meteorological phenomena 

 generally, vegetable physiology in its various departments, struc- 

 tural and functional, not a little aided by the revelations of the 

 microscope, are all now receiving their special study, and will 

 find their special application in the elucidation of important 

 agricultural questions. And, although we cannot fail to see 

 that all will, sooner or later, conspire to give security to the next 

 important step in these inquiries, it must be freely admitted, 

 that as yet the difference of opinion is so great, and there really 

 are so many points undetermined, that we may rest satisfied to 

 delay for the present the summary, we had intended to give, in the 

 hope that, when the opportunity next occurs, we may have a less 

 questioned advance to record. 



In conclusion, the field results recorded in the foregoing pages 

 have clearly shown that, from some cause or other, the endeavour, 

 by given mechanical operations, to attain a deep and porous 

 staple, with the admixture with the surface of a certain portion of 

 the subsoil, was quite insufficient to secure in the Rothamsted 

 soil, those conditions of texture and of other qualities incident to 

 it, essential to the successful start, and healthy after development, 

 especially of an early thinly-seeded wheat crop. The field ex- 

 periments also afford conclusive evidence, that the defect, so far 

 as it was chemical, was not connected with a deficiency of avail- 

 able mineral, relatively to available nitrogenous food. The con- 

 cluding experiments showed, on the contrary, that an increased 

 provision of nitrogen in the soil, by manure, gave a very much 

 larger amount of increase on the now more thickly-seeded land, 

 than an increased supply of the mineral constituents of the crop 

 could do. That such should be the result on the land at Rot- 

 hamsted, where the Lois Weedon plan had failed, was perfectly 

 consistent with the limited degree of porosity for the exposure of 

 surface to atmospheric influences, and for the permeation of the 

 roots, which had been attained by the means employed. It is also 

 perfectly consistent with those views as to the sources of the 

 resultant effects of fallow, and as to the characteristic action of 

 different constituents of manure on ordinarily cultivated land, 

 upon which we have so often insisted. 



The results in the laboratory again, have borne their consistent 

 evidence on every point. Thus, bearing in mind at the same time 

 the comparative character as to porosity of the Lois Weedon and 

 the Rothamsted soils, it is found that, taking a given amount of 

 each in its natural state, both of these more porous soils at Lois 

 Weedon contain more nitrogen than those at Rothamsted. Qne 

 of them again has, besides its greater exposed surface in the 

 field, no doubt associated with a greater susceptibility to atmos- 



