The Scientific Agrictilhirc of the Pc7'iod. 287 



•eS'ects proved that the farming world was unconsciously alive 

 to the value of ammonia, but there was of course no possi- 

 bility'' of extracting and retaining this volatile gas by merely 

 .soaking substances containing it in rain-water for a few days. 



In fact, his scientific knowledge was neither more nor less 

 than that of Houghton, who fifty years before wrote an article 

 •on Hair, in which he stated that "it is of the nature of hoof 

 and horn both for physick and land. Sowed on dry land it 

 makes it ver}^ fruitful for 3 years, and so again if repeated. 

 This custom with horn, hair, hoof, and raggs (which is wooll) 

 reaches several places, and I hope all, in time, will mind what I 

 say to their incredible advantage." ^ 



^ When we suggested that it was first the office of the farmer 

 to point out his wants to the chemist, it was presupposed that 

 the latter was sufficientl}'- master of his science to be capable of 

 supplying them. We shall now see that this was far from the 

 case. It is indeed open to doubt whether, as regards practical 

 results, the chemistry of Bradley's time was in advance of that 

 of the ancients. Stercoration, or the method of restoring to 

 soil its exhausted fertility by means of the dunghill, was known 

 to the Greeks, who dated the origin of this process to the 

 utilisation on the land of the immense quantities of refuse 

 manure from the Augean Stables. The Italians, for his ser- 

 vices in a similar direction, had deified their king Stercutius. 

 The waste products of the farmyard, the house chimney, the 

 dovecote, and the highway had from the earliest times been 

 recognised as valuable to vegetable growth, and all that the 

 ■chemist had so far achieved was to strive unsuccessfully to 

 trace the fecundating virtures of all manures to one common 

 source. This was the Sal Gemmas of the ancients, the Qelov of 

 Plato, the salt which by Mosaic law seasoned the oblations, the 

 chief object of affection to the gods of the Greeks, and the 

 principal ingredient of the alchemist's crucible. " What do 

 you think," says Glauber, " that the Philosophers meant by 

 their Mercury ; which at once is Male and Female ; fixed and 



^ ^1 Collection for Improvement of Husbandry and Tradi\ Xo. XI. 

 vol. V. Nov. 9, 16'JJ. 



