1869.] Agriculture. 509 



taint of dishonesty attaching to either salesman or warehouseman. 

 Other phosphates besides those of hme are now used in the manu- 

 facture ; and thus, use as much sulphuric acid in their conver- 

 sion as you will, a portion of the phosphate which it makes 

 soluble in water becomes in time insoluble in water — reprecipitated, 

 as it were, in the substance of the superphosphate itself, or in other 

 words, it is again reduced. After all, however, the effect of the 

 original solution is not entirely lost; the process which thus pre- 

 maturely takes place does in every case ensue upon the addition of a 

 superphosphate to the soil ; and it is the finely divided condition 

 of the resultant neutral phosphate in the soil, not the easily soluble 

 condition of superphosphate which is applied to the soil, on which 

 the immediately fertilizing power of the manure depends. 



The subject of thin seeding has occupied a good deal of attention 

 lately in agricultural journals. The practice of sowing two or even 

 three bushels of wheat per acre seems on the face of it a monstrous 

 waste of seed. There are thus 1,200,000 to 1,800,000 grains sown 

 on every acre, corresponding to from 30 to 40 seeds on every 

 square foot of ground ! which is apparently absurd. And no doubt 

 it is really wrong in the great majority of cases ; nevertheless the 

 question is one not for the arithmetician, but for the agriculturist. 

 The object is to get the greatest possible crop; and if, as the 

 ' Agricultural Gazette ' points out, the practice of sowing 20 or 30 

 seeds per foot proves right during the harvest month, we can well 

 afford to neglect the arithmetical proof of its folly and absurdity 

 which it will receive during all the other eleven months of the year. 

 In practice the quantity of seed sown per acre has gradually di- 

 minished of late years, and 5 or 6 pecks of wheat are now com- 

 monly sown per acre, where 8 or 10 used to be the common allow- 

 ance. Among matters of personal interest which have occupied 

 attention during the past quarter, we may name the publication of 

 a memoir of the late John Grey, of Dilston, by his daughter, Mrs, 

 G. Butler. It is the biography of a large-hearted and accomplished 

 man, whose great and good influence upon agricultural progress it 

 will materially help to maintain. The labours of Mr. W. Smith, of 

 "Woolstone, as the pioneer of steam cultivation, have been the subject 

 of discussion and recognition. The visit of M. Dumas, the distin- 

 guished French chemist, to this country, and notably to the experi- 

 mental farm of Mr. Lawes at Eothamsted and to the sewage farm 

 at Barking, deserves a record for the attention which was directed 

 by it at once to the long-continued and most valuable labours of 

 our great agricultural chemists, Messrs. Lawes and Gilbert, in the 

 domain of agricultural theory, and to the leading question in the 

 field of agricultural practice, which is receivmg so satisfactory a 

 solution in the hands of the Metropolis Sewage Company. 



