No. VIIL] EXPERIMENTS ON POTATOES. 61 



Remarks.— The potatoes planted with the above mixture came quickly t^lirough the 

 ground, and were very luxuriant in foliace. They were lifted 15th October, after being cut 

 down by frost whilst still unripe and growing. On being taken up, they were found to yield 

 a produce of 56 bolls of Renfrewshire measure, weighing 5 cwts. each, per acre, of very 

 fine potatoes, many of which weighed from 24 to 30 oz. each. 



N. B —This mixture, alter being put together, fermented, and was frequently turned, but 

 kept dry. 



The several series of experiments made upon potatoes by Mr, Fleming are 

 deserving of careful consideration, and many of them of judicious repetition. 

 They are all well contrived or devised, and each series skilfully arranged. 



In agricultural experiments it is of the greatest possible consequence that the 

 practical man should have a clear and definite object distinctly in view. If so, 

 his experiments may be signally successful in his own estimation, while, eco- 

 nomically considered, they may be total failures. This, as we have seen, was, 

 to a certain extent, the case with the first series of experiments made upon Lord 

 Blantyrc's farm, as above detailed (p. 42). The applications in some instances 

 lessened the crop, but the result, nevertheless, threw considerable light upon the 

 questions which the trials were intended to solve. 



In making an experiment, the practical farmer asks a question of nature; — in 

 arranging the form and details of his experiment, he is putting together the 

 words by which his question is to be expressed. If his question be clearly put, 

 nature will give him, sooner or later, a clear and distinct answer — if he have 

 skill enough in nature's language to understand what she has said to him. I 

 say, sooner or later, for it may be sometimes necessary to repeat the question, 

 either because something has intervened to prevent nature, so to spe£ik, from 

 hearing his question, — because it has not been accurately expressed — or because 

 something in the seasons, or otherwise, has prevented her answer from being 

 clearly understood — perhaps from bein^ heard or read at all. Circumstances 

 may even prevent the answer from bemg given until a second summer come 

 round, when, if we are not on the alert, it may never be received at all. 



The above experiments, as well as those which follow, form an excellent 

 study for the practical farmer in reference to this matter. Eveiy series is plan- 

 ned with a view to a given end, the circumstances are carefully noted before, 

 during, and at the close of each of the several trials, and the answers are re- 

 corded with a very praiseworthy degree of accuracy. I shall place together, in 

 one view, the most important of the deductions to which the experiments of 

 1842 appear to have led, when I shall have laid before the reader the whole of 

 the tables which have as yet been placed in my hands. 



C— EXPERIMENTS UPON BARLEY. 



The object of the following experiments, also made by Mr. Fleming, was to 

 ascertain the relative effect of different saline stbbstances, when applied^ as top- 

 dressings, to a crop of white barley. 



The results, as shown in the last column, are sufficiently interesting. 



Results of Experiments with various substances used as top-dressings upon 

 Barley (common white). The Barley sown l4th April, top-dressed 6th 

 May, and cut down 25th August, thrashed, cleaned, measured, and weighed 

 5th October, 1842. The quantity of land in each plot was one-eighth cf an 

 imperial axrt. 



Remarks.— The soil of this field is a light loam, as nearly as possible uniform in quality, 

 and had lain about ten years in pasture previous to the spring of 1842, when it was £ul 

 trenched with the spade twelve inches deep. It had been thorough-drained with tiles some 

 years before breaking up. After being trf r*ched, it was dressed over, except where the ex- 

 periments were, with two chaldrons of linift per acrefslaked with water, in which common 

 salt had been dissolved, and before sowing the barley, with the exception of the experiment 

 ground, it v/as top-dressed over with two and a half^cwfs. of Tumbull's artificial guano per 

 acre, harrowed in, aa was also the top-dressing No. 3 in the table of experiments. The bar- 

 ley was sown broadcast, 2i bushels per acre. Owing to the extraordinary drought at time 

 of sowing, it did not braird well till rain came ; after which it made rapid progress. Advan- 

 tage was taken of heavy rains to put on the top-dressings, all of which were sown at the 

 time above stated, viz., 6lh May, except No. 4, which was not sovm till the Ifth, at which 



