1847.] Extracts from the Older Journals. 277 



EXTRACTS FROM THE OLDER JOURNALS. 



We have occasionally given extracts from the older journals 

 for the purpose of furnishing our readers with comparative views 

 of the past and the present. Those who think, will be able to es- 

 timate the progress we are making, and have been making for 

 the last half century. Many suppose that they are living in a 

 new era of science and agriculture; that the doctrines which are 

 promulgated now, are absolutely new and are especially the pro- 

 duct of the mind of the present generation. But we shall see 

 how it is by reference to the works of the Agriculturists of 1790 

 —1799. 



If we do not find the identical doctrine now received, we shall 

 find at least their germs, or what have been the suggestive ideas 

 upon which has been reared some of the most popular works of 

 the day. 



Jigrkultural Inquiries on Plaster of Paris. Also Facts, Obser- 

 vations, and Conjectures on that Substance, when applied as a 

 Manure, Sfc. By Richard Peters. Philadelphia. Cist Sf 

 Markland. 8vo. pp. Ill, 1797. 



With great pleasure we announce this small publication, which 

 is intended, as the author modestly says, " to invite as well as 

 to give information," and which is collected chiefly from the prac- 

 tice of farmers in Pennsylvania. The subject of manures appears, 

 as yet, to be in need of much further elucidation than it has hith- 

 erto received; and on scarcely any article of the whole tribe of 

 fertilizing substances is a rational theory more wanted than in the 

 case of gypsum. Mr. Peters has proceeded in the proper w^ay to 

 come to a right understanding of his subject, by laboriously and 

 patiently collecting, not only the facts which fell under his own 

 eye, but those which occurred to the intelligent farmers of the 

 country around him. 



The mode adopted to collect information was by a circular let- 

 ter, containing about a dozen queries. To these queries answers 

 have been returned by Messrs. West, Frazier, Price, Hand, Cur- 

 wen, Sellers, Duffield, Wharton, Roberts, Heckewelder, and by 

 Mr. Peters himself So that the materials collected are to be 

 considered as the result of the agricultural experience of these re- 

 respectable cultivators. They all agree in the vast utility of gyp- 



