284 MONTHLY JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURE. 



answer to the question — What has science 

 done for Agriculture ? 

 Southampton, Fth. 27, 1846. 



* ^* The preparation of bones for turnips, 

 as described by Mr. Pusey (being lieated with 



ashes), and other substances, has been long 

 practiced with success ; and this preparation 

 causes a softening of the substance so much 

 that the smaller parts become immediately 

 proper for th^food of plants. 



J. KIMBERLEY. 



LIQUID-MANURE CART, 



FOR FIELD-CROPS, GARDENS, AND TOBACCO-BEDS. 



We rarely see one of the carts at work, sprinkling the streets so evenly and 

 handsomely, to lay the dust in the towns, without thinking how useful such a 

 contrivance would be, on every farm or plantation, to water, and at the same 

 time manure, lawns and tobacco-beds, and small squares or beds, such as plant- 

 beds, strawberry-beds, &;c. and in gardens. Quite sure we are that no mechanic in 

 a town would suffer, in his business, the vital damage that the planter suft'ers 

 for want of early plants, if any particular difficulty in his way could be obviated 

 as easily as the planter might do this, if he has only water at command — and 

 that every farmer should have who has roofs on his houses. 



Let a plant-bed be made— a permanent one, adjacent to water. If the soil is 

 not exactly suitable, a permanent one may easily be compounded and inade there ; 

 and then how easy it would be, in dry weather, to water one large bed, once a 

 day, if necessary, by means of one of these liquid-manure carts, either with 

 water alone, or the water might be impregnated with some fertilizing substance, 

 as guano, or tobacco, or the litter of stables or the cow-yard. Besides this, a 

 machine for sowing grain or plaster would serve to sprinkle lime, or ashes, or 

 other manure, or even common " road dust ;" or this might be done by hand, 

 and some appliance of this sort might, perhaps, serve not only to manure the 

 plants, but to destroy or prevent the fly. This suggestion is hazarded on the 

 following remark of Mr. Baker, a learned entomologist, in a lale number of 

 the London Farmer's Magazine. We shall give the whole of his lecture " On 

 Insects Destructive to Growing Crops," if we can command room for it in 

 this number. But tiie particular observation applicable to our subject here is one 

 relating to the turnip fly. " The best mode of getting rid of these insects," he 

 says, "is by a very simple process. I am quite satisfied that there is no method 

 so good as the application of common road-dust, which should be strewed with 

 the hand upon the rows of plants, early in the morning, when the dew is upon 

 them. It will be found that they will not touch any of the plants upon which 

 the dust has fallen." Now although it does not follow that road-dust will repel 

 the attacks of the fly so destructive to the tobacco-plant in the bed, yet it may 

 do it ; and the experiment is easily made. 



Let the planter and the farmer be ambitious to discover remedies for himself 

 against the calamities that overtake his labors, and not ingloriously wait for 

 these discoveries to be made by other classes, or for suggestions to come from 

 other countries than his own. 



How many of the improvements in agricultural implements have been struck 

 out by the ingenuity of practical fvmcrs ? One or two occur to us at the mo- 

 ment : l\ie horse-rake, invented by Fennock, of Delaware — a practical Quaker 



(572J 



