90 Mrs. Ibbetson on the injurious Effects [August, 



the middle root throws out side roots and radicles to nourish any 

 new shoot that may be formed. 



For some time past I have been endeavouring to enforce the 

 proposition that all plants are favourable to one particular soil, 

 the tenacious manner in which weeds grow, the difficulty of 

 killing them, the variety peculiar to each soil, the plants found 

 in certain situations, and in these only, are strong proofs that soil 

 is of the first consequence to the existence of a plant. Then 

 there are many plants that can live only where a peculiar ingre- 

 dient (either earth or salt) is found. Vegetables near the sea 

 coast will not thrive unless the soil contains a certain quantity 

 of muriate of soda. How often have seeds been found totally 

 dormant in one kind of earth, and when removed into a different 

 soil have been revived and forced into life ? Duhamel gives many 

 examples of this, and I have myself frequently experienced it. 

 The parietaria and borage will not thrive except in such soils as 

 contain nitrate of potash or nitrate of lime ; saintfoin will not 

 grow well without chalk. I have now tried, for three years past, 

 many different corns (particularly wheat) in clay, gravel, chalk, 

 sand, and a rich mould, to see in which each succeeds best, 

 manuring all alike ; and I have foimd that far from always 

 choosing the richest soil, there are quite as many do well in the 

 others ; provided it was their original and proper soil, and con- 

 genial to their nature, they would give a much larger proportion 

 than the same wheat would do in a richer soil without this 

 advantage. I have known sand plants, which were constantly 

 affected by a sort of dropsy, when put into a rich soil, completely 

 cured, by being placed in their own original and proper earth. The 

 red lammas wheat always produced the proportion of nine in sand 

 to six in clay, when both were equally manured ; and the Taun- 

 ton wheat will give in a rich soil thirteen to four in a sand. The 

 blue cone wheat gave ten in clay to only five in sand, and only 

 seven in a rich soil. The Dantzic wheat gave in a sandy loam 

 the proportions of eleven to seven in clay, and only six in chalk, 

 all manured alike ; and they maintained nearly the same propor- 

 tion during the three years that the experiment was continued. 

 I tried about ten varieties of wheats, and the numbers in that 

 time varied very little in three successive trials. The fact is still 

 more decided with respect to clovers, and many other plants, as 

 lucern, saintfoin, hogs' peas, beans, canary seed, hops, briza 

 media, poa pratensis, and trivialis, cynosurus cristatus, which 

 are all decided chalk plants. In clay we have the hop-trefoils, 

 cabbage of every kind, festuca calamaria, trifolium procumbens, 

 poa pratensis, medicago sativa ; while festuca fluitans, festuca 

 elatior, and poa aquatica, grow still better in wet clay. In sandy 

 soils the most decided plants are found, as the turnip, carrot, 

 parsnip, beet, annual meadow grass, the cow grass, bird's-foot 

 trefoil, avena flavescens. The cow grass is so entirely fed by the 

 atmosphere, and is, therefore, so truly a sand plant, that it wants 



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