1864. ] ( 655 ) 
CHRONICLES OF SCIENCE. 
1. AGRICULTURE. 
An unusually dry summer has brought into prominence several agri- 
cultural topics of importance, in which the uses and economy of water 
are concerned. Thus, it has entirely justified those who advocate 
drainage and deep tillage as really conservative of the water supply on 
which a growing plant depends. We have dug in well-drained land a 
hole five feet deep in a turnip-field, and from the bottom of it clods of 
earth have been brought up full of fibres of the turnip-root, easily 
recognizable by their taste. These fibres went far below the artificial 
drainage of the subsoil; but the vigorous vitality to which such deep 
growth was due was itself, no doubt, owing to the wholesome condition 
for the plants in which that drainage had placed the upper layer of soil. 
In this indirect way, as well as by the direct improvement and increased. 
capacity as a storerodém which drainage and deep tillage confer upon 
the upper soil, do these operations increase the ability of plants to 
withstand a drought. That of the past summer has in nothing shown 
itself more plainly than in the prominent appearance of the dark, 
fresh green of deep-rooted plants, as the thistle and the clover plant, 
amongst the brown parched, surface-feeding grasses, which have been 
soon dried up. And anything which gives to cultivated plants a 
deeper, larger, fuller store on which to draw for supplies, is in cases 
like the present season especially beneficial. 
No doubt it is owing to this better tillage of the country generally, 
that the drought has not proved more injurious to the seed crops of 
the past harvest. Notwithstanding that our grain crops had already 
pretty fully established themselves before the commencement of 
the dry weather, we might fairly have expected it to have been more 
injurious than it has proved. The produce of these crops, though 
nothing like that of 1863, has not been altogether unsatisfactory. 
Of 200 returns to the ‘ Agricultural Gazette,’ indeed, from different parts 
of the country, only 20, 47, and 12 respectively, of wheat, barley, and 
oats, declare the crop to be above an average one ; but one-half of the 
reports of wheat, and more than one-half of those of barley, state the 
yield to be an average. Oats, beans, and peas are undoubtedly much 
below an average yield this year. But this, and the inferior produce 
generally of the corn crop, may be attributed rather to the cold weather 
of June, than to the drought of May, June, and July. 
The subject of summer irrigation is another point to which the 
weather has given importance. The experience of our sewaged meadows 
during the past season has not been so favourable in this respect as 
might have been expected. It appears that the Italian ryegrass, the 
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