( 80 ) IJan., 



CHRONICLES OF SCIENCE, 



|ittlubin0 tljc ^prombiugs of ^(sanub SfidctJcs at Ijomc anb ^broab ; 

 anb Uotitfs of Jleaut ^rii^ntifit ^ittrahirf. 



1. AGEICULTUEE, 



And Recent Agricultural Literature. 



A GOOD example of the serviceableness of the chemist, rather as 

 the critic and commentator than as the guide of the agriculturist; 

 occurs in the recently published volume of the ' Eughsli Agri- 

 cultural Society's Journal.' The clover plant removes from the 

 soil large quantities of those substances on which its fertihty is 

 generally supposed to depend. It takes, indeed, according to 

 Dr. Voelcker, in the paper to which we refer, more potash, phos- 

 phoric acid, lime, and other mineral matters which enter into 

 the composition of our cultivated plants, than any other crop 

 usually grown in this country. How obviously, then, must it 

 be for the interest of the wheat crop, that the clover which pre- 

 cedes it on the land should be consumed where it grows, grazed and 

 depastured by sheep or other animals, so that the substance of the 

 crop may be returned to the soil from which it came, instead of 

 being cut for forage and taken green to the feeding-house or stable, 

 or mown for hay, or harvested when its seed has rijiened — being in 

 all these cases altogether taken from the land. The ash con- 

 stituents of the plant would thus be ready for the crop succeeding 

 it, instead of merely enriching the general dung-heap of the ftirm, 

 to be applied elsewhere. It is, liowever, the fact, not only that 

 the clover plant, which takes so much nutriment from the land, is the 

 best possible preparation for wheat, but that the wheat crop is 

 better after a clover crop cut and carried off the land than after 

 clover fed upon the field where it has grown. This, of course, 

 was not at all to have been expected, but Dr. Voelcker, modestly 

 taking his facts from the actual experience of the farmer, instead of 

 enforcing a necessarily imperfect theory as tlie corrective of mis- 

 taken practice, finds on investigation a sufficient explanation of 

 them in the following circumstances, by which, of couise, the 

 theory of the subject nmst for the future be limited and modified. 

 During the growth of clover a large amount of nitrogenous 

 matter accumulates in the soil. This is due partly to the decaying 



