AMMONIACAL MANURES. AT 
opment. ‘Their influence may be beneficial at one period 
and highly pernicious at another. Ammonia and manures 
containing nitrogen, generally, are good examples of the 
truth of this observation. 
No fact connected with the culture of either sorghum 
or the tropical cane has been more clearly established by 
the experience of planters than that manures of animal 
origin are not only injurious to the quality of the sugar, 
but present great obstacles to its formation when called 
into action during the middle and later stages of growth. 
They favor the production in the juice of substances con- 
taining nitrogen, of which albumen in its various modifi- 
cations is the common representative. This substance is 
always augmented in all plants by giving them a large 
supply of ammonia conveyed in the form of animal ma- 
nure. The gluten of wheat, for example, is commonly 
more abundant according to the quantity of such manure 
applied to the soil in which wheat is grown. This sub- 
Stance is an essential constituent likewise of the seed of 
cane. A certain amount of nitrogenous matter in a muci- 
laginous form necessarily exists in the juice previously to 
the ripening of the seed, and at that time a sufficient quan- 
tity of it forsakes the stem and leaves, and in the form of 
gluten, etc. becomes fixed in the seed. At the period of 
ripening, therefore, the quantity of azotized mucilage or 
albumen previously found associated with the sugar in the 
juice, is diminished in proportion to the quantity consumed 
by the seed. ‘The juice is purer then than at any former 
period. An increase in the quantity of the seeds also fol- 
lows an increased supply of ammonia. 
In general terms, therefore, it may be asserted that am- 
monia applied as a special manure, in large quantity, is 
important when a large quantity of grain, abounding in 
nutritious substances, is the main object of the cultivator. 
