1G DEDUCTIONS FROM ANALOGY. 



to special diseases such as that called fingers-and-toes acci- 

 dents which are more or less completely beyond the calculations 

 of pure or theoretical chemistry. 



6. As the cultivated carrot is the offspring of the wild carrot, 

 (daucus carotaj) so the white beet (beta vulgaris campestris alba] 

 and the mangold-wurtzel (beta vulgaris campestris) are allied to 

 the sea-side beet, (beta maritima,} which, like them, has a fleshy 

 root, and is good for food. This analogy indicates the probable 

 wants of the beet tribe, the probable utility of saline applications 

 to the plant while growing, and the especial expediency of 

 making experiments upon it with that common salt for which 

 the Beta maritima frequents the sea-shore. 



The farmers of the Guildford Club, (Surrey,) in a recent dis- 

 cussion on the growth of beet, came to the unanimous resolution 

 that, in their soils, experience had shown common salt to be a 

 valuable promoter of the growth of this root, and that it was 

 worthy of being generally recommended. 



The analogy above stated throws light on this result of prac- 

 tical experience, and points out to the improving experimenter 

 the special value to him of a familiarity with such analogies : 

 they not only modify and restrain the conclusions to which pure 

 chemistry might erroneously lead him, but they indicate new 

 paths of inquiry on which his chemical knowledge may exercise 

 itself to the manifest advantage of scientific agriculture. 



7. The pea exhibits, among its several varieties, similar 

 liabilities to be attacked by insects as the turnip does, and 

 which, as in the case of the turnip, do not admit of easy or 

 satisfactory explanation. 



I lately saw on the home farm of Lord St John, at Melsh- 

 burne, in Huntingdon, a field of winter peas, sown in Novem- 

 ber 1848, which had been all treated and manured alike, but 

 on one half of which the seed sown was the early maple a 

 common field pea; on the other half the Ringwood marrow 

 dwarf a white pea. The latter was attacked at Christmas by 

 the slugs, and in great part devoured so as to require filling up 

 with fresh seed, while the former the gray pea was untouched 

 by them. There may have been some other reason besides the 

 difference of variety for this limited attack of the slug ; but it is 



