130 QUARTERLY JOURNAL. 



the air, and of raising the temperature of the soil by its erema- 

 causis, or slow combustion. Besides, its minutely divided silica 

 is in a more favorable condition for absorption by the rootlets of 

 plants, than that which is offered to them by the soil itself. We 

 may add to these supposed useful properties of the husk, the me- 

 chanical service w'hich in certain stiff, compact lands it is capable 

 of exerting, by keeping the ground open to the access of air, and 

 as an absorbent of moisture. As it is unlike to the stalk and leaf, 

 in not containing alkali, it might, perhaps, be found advantageous 

 to add wood a-shes along with it to the soils on which it is applied. 



The extraordinary results, so fully proven of late, to flow from 

 the use of minutely divided charcoal, would perhaps authorise 

 another mode of treating the rice offal, which is to burn it wdth a 

 smothered combustion in small kilns, or in heaps partly covered 

 with soil, whereby it might be converted into a species of char- 

 coal. I should anticipate from such a preparation of the husk, 

 whether applied alone, or previously mixed up with putrescent 

 matters into a compost, the most marked effects.* 



I conclude this report with the hope that this inquiry, which is 

 by no means supposed to have exhausted the subject, or to have 

 reached that rigid accuracy of result which it is to be hoped may 

 one day be obtained, may afford the rice planter more valid reasons 

 than he before had, for husbanding those mineral elements of his 

 crop with a religious care, the neglect of which, with whatever 

 apparent impunity it may at first be attended, cannot fail in the 

 end to involve him in a hopeless struggle against nature. 



C. U. SHEPARD. 



Charleston, April 6th, 1844. 



4 



AN ANALYSIS OF COTTON WOOL, COTTON SEED, IN- 

 DIAN CORN, AND THE YAM POTATOE 



1st. Cotton Wool. 



One hundred parts by weight of cotton-wool on being heated in 

 a platina crucible, so long as a brightly burning gas continued to 

 be emitted, lost 86 . 09 parts — the residuum being a perfectly charred 

 cotton, which on being ignited under a mutHeuntil every particle 

 of carbon was consumed, lost 12.985, and left an almost purely 



*I need scarcely to add, that the different composition of tlie stem and leaves of 

 the rice, would scarcely justify a similar procedure wilh these parts of the plant, since 

 unless the temperature be regulated with great care, the silica would form witii the 

 tile associated alljali, a true glass, which for agricultural purposes, would be nearly as 

 inoperative as common sand. 



