1868. ] ( 549 ) 
CHRONICLES OF SCIENCE. 
1. AGRICULTURE. 
TueERE is but little to record in an agricultural Chronicle of the 
quarter beyond the effect of the universal drought of the past 
summer upon our field crops. The maxim that “ Drought never 
breeds dearth” appears likely to prove true of 1868 so far as food 
for man is concerned ; but every kind of succulent growth on which 
we depend for our winter’s supply of food for the live stock of the 
farm has been checked so severely that food for beast will be scarce 
and costly. The hay crop and the root crop are both much below 
an average. The wheat crop is unusually productive, excepting only 
on light and shallow soils; but all spring-sown grain crops are de- 
ficient. There has probably never been a summer less helpful to the 
grass lands of the country which were, over all the Southern and 
Midland Counties during July and August, bleached and dried up 
so completely that a sheep was to be noticed on its pasture rather 
by its shadow than anything else; the ground it stood on being 
the exact colour of its wool. 
Under these circumstances green crops have been possible only 
by the aid of artificial watering; and land irrigated, whether by 
spring and river water, or by sewage, has yielded extraordinary 
crops. On the Metropolis Sewage Company’s farm near Barking, a 
poor thin soil on gravel, which had been in wheat last year, has 
produced 6 quarters of white wheat per acre with the aid of sewage 
only ; land naturally fertile, but which had had 60 tons of grass 
taken from it last year under sewage dressings, is now covered with 
a very heavy crop of mangold wurzel, having received four dress- 
ings of sewage during the past summer. And on other fields the 
power of the waste drainage water of the metropolis, unaided by 
any other fertilizer, to produce rapid growth of grass, roots, cab- 
bages, and potatoes, has been amply proved. Great crops also of 
strawberries have been grown on the sewage farm: 160/. worth were 
sold off 14 acre, having received no other dressing. 
An unusually early harvest, got in four or five weeks before the 
usual time, has enabled the early autumn cultivation of a large extent 
of stubble land in most parts of the country; and the advantages 
of deep steam-cultivation will no doubt appear next year. The 
opportunity for a much greater extent than is commonly sown of 
so-called “catch crops,” between the main crops of successive years, 
has been generally taken, and we shall have for the advantage of 
