460 EUROPEAN AGRICULTURE. 



ing it to its natural decay under the soil, and its conversion into 

 food for the growing crop. They are hardly aware of the amount 

 of this vegetable matter, as demonstrated by an eminent farmer 

 in New England, and a farmer who would be eminent any 

 where, who found, by actual measurement and calculation, that 

 the vegetable matter in a common closely fed, field, or meadow, 

 weighing the roots as well as the tops, amounted in an acre to 

 full thirteen tons.* 



The manures applied to wheat are a matter of great impor 

 tance. Different wheats, or wheats grown in different localities, 

 differ very much in their nutritious properties, or in the quantity 

 of good bread which can be obtained from them. The valuable 

 and nutritious qualities of wheat are supposed to depend on the 

 proportionate quantity of gluten and albumen which it contains. 

 This is ascribed by many persons to the nature of the soil in 

 which it has grown, and to the kind of manure which has been 

 applied to it. This theory is altogether probable, and perhaps 

 sufficiently established to induce us to act in reference to it ; and, 

 therefore, to apply manures which are likely to contribute to the 

 growing plant the elements required. But many other things 

 may come into operation, such especially as the climate and 

 temperature, and other influences which are as yet imperfectly 

 understood by us. The quantity of flour yielded by different 

 wheats varies considerably, as the millers well understand. A 

 distinguished French chemist, in examining 21 different kinds 

 of wheat, found that the average yield in flour was as 79 of fari 

 naceous matter to 100 pounds of crude grain. But this flour 

 differed very much in its constituents in different kinds of grain. 

 In actual nutritious matter, the difference in different wheats was 

 found to be as 14 to 21. These were wheats grown in dif 

 ferent countries and different latitudes. If this difference de 

 pended wholly upon climate, it would of course be entirely 

 beyond our control. 



In wine countries, it is known that in different localities the 

 same species of grape produces a wine of an altogether different 

 quality and value from what it does in others. The kind of 

 grape, the mode of culture, the degree of ripeness, the mode of 

 making the wine, the age of the wine, and, doubtless in many 



* Mr. Phinney, of Lexington, Massachusetts. 



