i 
reasoning. That to change seed from one kind of soil to another will 
produce a profitable result is a maxim of almost universal acceptation, 
nor does the farmer stop to reason with himself as to its soundness or 
fallacy. 
Here is the point at which farmers fail to bring into requisition their 
own powers of reflection, or even to use the evidence of their own prac- 
tical experience. They do not stop to inquire as to the effect of remov- 
ing seed irom a soil and climate to which it bas been naturalized and 
adapted, to that, to which it is not natural and to which it has not been 
accustomed ; and they fail to remember that when they go abroad for 
seed, and pay a higher price for it, it is to obtain a quality better than 
their own, and commensurate with the price they pay for it, and that 
herein lies its superiority; that it amounts to nothing more than an 
imperfect mode of selection. 
Another maxim which farmers generally aceept as an axiom is, that 
by sowing wheats of different qualities together, that they will so 
hybridize as to produce a mixed breed; while even a little observation 
would teach» them the error of this couclusion, and that each grain 
produces its own like, and that really no hybridization takes place at 
all, and that the mixture of seed produces the unmitigated evil of mix- 
ing wheats which perhaps ripen at different periods, or perhaps require 
different treatment when they come to be reduced to flour. 
A little study of the nature of plants would seein to be necessary to 
a knowledge of their proper treatment during their growth. Of the 
flowers of plants seme are male and some female. In some the 
staminate and pistillate flowers occupy different parts of the same 
plants, asin Indian corn. In the larger number of plants the male and 
female orgaus mature at tle same time in the same flower: and of these 
some are subject to self-fertilization, and others to cross-fertilization. 
Such plants as pease, beans, wheat, and barley have the male and female 
organs within themselves, and are not subject to cross-fertilization, and 
therefore it is that wheats do not’ mix their qualities at all by being 
planted together; and as it is objectionable for other reasons, it suould 
never be done. The leaf or flower which protrudes from the glume of 
wheat is neither an anther, a pistil, nor a stamen, and neither emits nor 
receives the fertilizing pollen. 
CHEMICAL MEMORANDA. 
By Witt1am McMurtrit&, CHEMIST. 
BAT GUANO.—In a previous report of the Department I had the 
honor to submit the results of an analysis of a sample of bat excrement 
taken from a deposit near Huntsville, Ala., and the interest mani- 
fested in them, and the reports of other deposits received, from time to 
time, seemed to render it advisable to issue a cireular-letter to the reg- 
ular correspondents of the Department in the South, asking for infor- 
mation concerning the existence of such deposits, with complete deserip- 
tions of their location and extent. To these letters we have received 
replies of a very favorable character, many of them being accompanied 
with samples of the deposits described, developing the fact that the 
deposits were not confined to any partienlar section of the South, but 
that they exist in many of the States from Virginia to Texas, several of 
