DOUBTFUL EXPERIMENTS. 



181 



that a bushel of bones, added to 16 tons of manure, should have 

 any effect in diminishing the crop. We are, therefore, bound 

 to conclude that the differences in Mr Finnie's results were due 

 to some other cause to a variation either in the quantity or 

 quality of the manure on the different plots or in the nature of 

 the soil. 



I have extracted the above from the tabulated results of 

 thirteen experiments made by Mr Finnic, and published by the 

 Highland Society,* all of which are more or less open to criti- 

 cism, and exhibit very strikingly the caution with which appa- 

 rent differences ought to be regarded, and conclusions drawn 

 from numbers set down in a printed table of results. 



In a previous chapter, p. 75, 1 have quoted several examples 

 in illustration of the necessity of duplicate or triplicate experi- 

 ments, but none of them prove that necessity more than the 

 table of results from which the above have been taken. Were 

 it not for the lessons of care they teach us, we should regret 

 that such experiments had not been withheld from publication. 



7. On Potatoes, I find still fewer experiments to have been 

 made with the nitrates. Mr Turnbull, in Dumbartonshire, 

 applied it with the hand around the stems of his potatoes, after 

 they were four to six inches above the ground, at the rate of 

 1 J cwt. per imperial acre, and obtained an increase of upwards 

 of 3 tons an acre in the crop. This experiment was successful 

 enough to encourage repetition. 



4. Results of experiments with nitrate of soda, applied in 

 different proportions to the same crop. 



As this is a point which is deserving of experimental investi- 

 gation, I shall insert, in a separate section, the only two experi- 

 ments I have met with which exhibit the effects of different 

 quantities of the same nitrate applied under the same circum- 

 stances to the same crop. 



1. In 1844, Mr Gardiner, at Barochan in Renfrewshire, 

 applied to two portions of the same field of sown grasses, 1^ 

 and 2 cwt. of nitrate of soda respectively, with the following 

 results per imperial acre : 



* Transactions, October- 1844. 



