366 EUROPEAN AGRICULTURE. 



tion. Mr. Spooner cites a case in which two bushels of vitriol- 

 ized bones, with ashes, gave as good a crop as sixty bushels of 

 bones unprepared. To Swede turnips it seems more congenial 

 and efficient than to white turnips. Where the crop of turnips 

 is of so much importance as here, this discovery is of immense 

 consequence. Whether it will be equally beneficial to other crops, 

 to wheat. or grain crops, is to be decided by further trials. 

 The experiments reported by one farmer, in reference to a crop 

 of carrots the second year after its application, and to a field 

 sown with barley one year after its application, showed most 

 decidedly, so far, its permanent beneficial influences. 



There are other manures used here, which I shall find it 

 more convenient to notice in another part of my work, and 

 which, therefore, I now pass over. Some experiments, however, 

 have been made in Cornwall, with top-dressing land with straw, 

 which I shall refer to, as at least highly curious ; and which 

 deserve notice, as possible to lead to most important practical 

 results. They rest upon highly respectable authority. The 

 subject has been frequently referred to in the public papers, but 

 a detailed statement has been given by the secretary of the 

 Cornwall Experimental Club, and published in a late Journal of 

 the Royal Agricultural Society, from which I shall abridge the 

 account. 



8. FIBROUS COVERING, OR GURNEYISM. Mr. G. Gurney ob 

 served that, &quot; if a bush or other fibrous matter were left lying in 

 a field of grass, the vegetation beneath it would soon be observed 

 to be finer or fresher than that around it. This was a fact 

 known to every one, but the agency by which this increase of 

 growth was brought about, evidently involving some great and 

 important but unknown principle, had never been investigated. 

 Flags, rushes, straw, bushes, or, in short, any fibrous covering, 

 would produce a similar effect. Reeds, or wheatcn straw, 

 applied over grass, at the rate of about a load to a load and a 

 half per acre, would, in a short time, increase the quantity of 

 grass to an incredible extent. The various grasses under it 

 would be found to be healthy, and rapidly passing through the 

 stages to maturity, some growing, some flowering, some seeding. 

 Part of a field of grass placed under this operation for one month 

 had increased in weight, over the remaining portion left nncov- 



