1837] 



FARMERS' REGISTER 



38i 



"The principle, thai no soilvnll conimiie fertile tvhich 

 wants calcareous miitlcr, made public thirty yea.rs ai^o. — 

 111 Vol. XII, p. ()30., you state that, 'In uf;ricultuiiil 

 'science, tlie only point that we can recolli'ct woitliy 

 'of iiotifo that has occiirred (hiring; the past yf ar, is 

 ' the advancement o( the principle by the American 

 ' aiiricnltnral writer, Mr. Ruffin, that no soil whatever 

 ' will coiitinm' fertile lor any Icnoth of time that does 

 ' not contain calcareous matter. 'I'liis, we believe, 

 ' was never distinctly stated as a principle by Kirwan' 

 ' Chaptal, Davy, or any other Europenn chemist or 

 agriculturist.'* !n the Bath Societifs Papers, vol. xii., 

 there is an article headed, 'Chemical Analyses of 

 Soils,' by C. Boyd; in which, after icivino; the analyses 

 of three soils belonginn; to Dr. Fox ol' Brislington, 

 near Bristol, Mr. Boyd states that these soils were re- 

 markably stent, and that the leading; fact discovered 

 in the aalysis of them was, tliat calcareous earth was 

 wanting; in each soil. 'I have never heard of a fertile 

 soil,' adds Mr. Bovd, 'tliat did not contain some por- 

 tion of it ; and, were I to ofler an opinion as to their 

 treatment, it should be to use limestone gravel very 

 freely. Lime seems necessary as an ingredient in 

 their composition ; consequently, it should be had, if 

 the " ■ "" 



tile that wants calcareous matter. — Peter Mackenzie, 

 West Ple.an, Jan. 7. 1S37. 



As it does not seem to have been the design of 

 the writer above to charge the author of the 'Essay on 

 Calcareous Manures' with plagiarism, or claiming as 

 his own the prior discovery of another person, it is not 

 necessary to say more on that head than that he had 

 never seen or heard of the opinion oi publication of 

 Mr. Boyd, until just now presented in the letter copi- 

 ed above. Nor will that argue unusual ignorance, 

 when it is certain, from his own words, that Loudon 

 (perhaps the higbest agricultural authority now liv- 

 ing,) was manifestly ignorant that any such prior 

 statement had been made, and perhaps every other 

 agicuUurist of character and authority was equally 

 uninformed. This would be enough to prove that 

 Mr. Boyd's statement, though published in a popular 

 and widely circulated work (the 'Bath Society's 

 Papers') either attracted no notice, or was speedily 

 That Mr. 



practicable, in the state of carbonate : if quicklime is . forgotten. That Mr. Boyd's inference, to a certain, 

 spread, a consideTable time rnust elapse before it re- ! ^^^^^^ ^^^ ^„,,^p^,f j^ ^^^, certain-however few and 

 turns to that state. In another place, Mr. Boyd re- ■ ^ . , . , , , , ^ 



.,i^.-i.c 'Ti,r.f r,!-,,,*.! fia,-i.ro cr,m<> r^,-r.r.r.,-i\r^n ,^c■oorf^, msufftcient might havB bccu thc tacti 



s from which hiS; 

 inference was drawn. But there is scarcely a theoretic 

 cal opinion on agriculture that has been advanced as, 

 new, in the last thirty years, of which something ve- 



marks, 'That plants derive some proportion of earth 

 from tlie soil in which they grow, cannot be denied : 

 at the same time, it must be admitted, that the carbo- 

 naceous principle, in some form or other, appears ab- 

 solutely necessary to the production of good crops.' 

 (392.) It will happen, at times, that the honor of a r.V like had not been long before hazarded by some, 

 discovery will be contended lor: lor instance, the dis- forgotten writer, and which (on his data,) was more 

 covery oY oxalic acid, which some say was made by [ often the result of ignorance, than of the knowledge 

 Bergman, others by Scheele ; and some would rob 

 Priestley of the honor of the discovery of oxygen gas 

 and nitrogen gas, and ascribe this to Lavoisier. I 

 think it but right to state, that the honor is due to Mr. 

 Boyd, for laying before the public, upwards of thirty 



years ago, the principle that no soil will continue fer- 



*The following sentence follows in the article of Mr. 

 Loudon quoted from, and furnishes additional testimo- 

 ny of the writer's opinion. "We refer" continues the 

 editor "to the review of Mr. Ruffin's book in p. 156; 



[of Gardeners' Magazine, and which was copied into 



the Farmers' Register, p. 104, vol. v.] and those who | hides and objects of his satire, might be claimed 



of sound principles of agriculture. The writings of 

 the wildest theorists, and of the least sound reason- 

 ers, in agriculture as well as other sciences, are pre- 

 cisely those in which we would be most apt to find 

 the earliest intimations of things discovered afterwards; 

 to be true, and brought into use many years after such 

 intimations had been forgotten, even if they ever had 

 been known to any extent. If 'Gulliver's Voyage to 

 Lapiita' had been designed to pass for truth, there is 

 little doubt but that for some one of the crazy acade-. 

 micians and philosophers, whom the author used as ve- 



wish to peruse the work entire, will find it copied in 

 vols. VIII and IX of the 'British Farmers' Magazine,' 

 where it is given as a series of original communica- 

 tions to that periodical!" 



The fraud which Loudon refers to in the last sen- 

 tence — and which was committed while the ' British 

 Farmer's Magazine' was conducted by the Rev. Henry 

 Berry — was exposed in this journal, and commented 

 on in terms of due severitj'', (p. 511,vol.iii, Far. Reg.) 

 It is proper here to say, that Loudon was mistaken (as 

 would have been any other reader,) in supposing that 

 the 'Essay' was copied entire in the English periodical. 

 If this had been done, there would have been no reason 

 for the author to complain, whatever might still have 

 been thought of the act and the manner of appropria- 

 tion by the English editor. But, while he copied 

 pearly the whole of the ' Essay,' there was enough 

 omitted and changed to injure the work, and evidently 

 with the object of concealing the origin of the essay, 

 and to maintain its false character of being designed 

 by its author "as a series of communications to that 

 periodical !" 



the merit of the first conception of some of the scien- 

 tific discoveries of latter times. The 'flying island' of 

 Laputa itself might be considered as showing the first 

 conception of aerial navigation by balloons, and of the 

 but recently announced electro-magnetic motive pow- 

 er. In agriculture, more than any thing else, almost 

 every opinion, both false and true, has been advanced 

 at hazard ; and even when true, the truth was not 

 known, nor the practical value appreciated, either be- 

 cause it was lost among numerous errors, or because 

 stated at hazard, and without proper grounds to sus- 

 tain it. 



But it has also happened that there have been for- 

 gotten, or had remained unknown, those who were 

 truly the first discoverers of some most valuable appli-^ 

 cations of science and art; and which were afterwards 

 again discovered by others in remote regions, or at 

 distant periods. Thus the polarity of the magnet, and 

 the composition of gunpowder, (for fire-works) and 

 the art of printing, were all known in the still semi- 

 barbarous empire of China, many centuries before the 

 same things were discovered, and (what was much 



