TRAP ROCK AS MANURE. 30S 



high clay and gravelly soil, and a cool, moist season ; while the four-rowed re- 

 quires a warm, sandy loam, and is not so easily afFectcd by drouth. 



I was in En<;land last year — visited most of the London breweries — saw their 

 barleys and malls, and compared their samples with our own. Theirs was 

 heavier and coarser grain, but an equal weight of ours Would produce more 

 saccharine matter than theirs. 



The average price of barley at Albany this season may be stated at 5a cents 

 for two rowed, and 5S cents for four-rowed. The proportion cultivated is about 

 33 per cent, of the latter. The total quantity brought to tide-water this season 

 (I think) is about 1,300,000 bushels. I am not sufliciently conversant in the 

 management of stock to inform you of the relative advantages of each kind of 

 grain, but barley (in its raw state) has not been considered by our farmers very 

 profitable feed for stock. With regard to mailing it for that object, I have no 

 doubt of its advantages, and only wonder our farmers have never tried the ex- 

 periment. Barley, by the process of mailing, increases 2 to 3 percent, in bulk, 

 and loses about one-lifth in weight. 



I should be pleased to do all in my power to aid the circulation of The Farm- 

 jsRs' Library, and in the meanwhile, I subscribe myselt'. 



Your obedient servant, WM. VASSAR. 



Hon. John S. Skin.ver, New- York. 



P. S. — The six-rowed barley is much of the same character as the four-rowed, 

 but It has become proverbial to distinguish it by the name of the latter. 



TRAP ROCK AS A MANURE. 



EMPLOYMKNT OF CIIt:MIrfTS. 



Ought not every Slate, or Agricultural Society or 'Jnsiiiuie, possessing the 

 means, to employ a competent chemist, whose duty it should be to analyze such 

 soils and substances as might be sent from different parts of the State for the 

 benefit of its Agriculture ? Could any more useful office be well established ? 

 And would it not have been done long since if farmers were not the most neg- 

 lected and the most self-neglecting class of beings that go to make up the great 

 social compact. In the November number of the English Farmer's Magazine, 

 we find the following, and deem it worthy of a place. We have heard of tur- 

 keys being fattened, not only on English walnuts, given to them whole, which 

 we believe, but on " brickbats," which we do not believe. We were not be- 

 fore aware that land might be fattened, and its crops increased, by pulverized 

 trap rock. But the march of inquiry is bringing many strange things to light — 

 called strange, as the Indian calls the ship that heaves, and the lightning that 

 flashes, and the thunder that rolls on the stage — strange, because he is not be- 

 hind the curtain ! 



Here we may introduce the suggestion of a late Avriter, that the chemist would 

 do well to test the efficacy of different manures on fictitious soils, the composi- 

 tion of which he knows exactly ; and he might make fictitious soils of silica, 

 alumina, lime, Sec, alone, or in any combination. Thus he would fix his data, 

 and form for himself, so to speak, a zero, or starting-point, by which all his sub- 

 sequent experiments on natural soils might be regulated. He would thus be 

 enabled to speak with positive confidence, says this Avriter, on matters that are 

 now but probable, and would reduce to system and regularity the whole theory 

 of manures. 



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