BONES. 



BONES. 



without any distinction between boned and un- 

 boned land, the comparative experiments upon 

 the succeeding crop were rendered uncertain. 

 The expevience of two more years, Mr. Turner 

 informs me (1836-7), has confirmed all his 

 former experiments : he continues the use of 

 this valuable fertilizer, with the most satisfac- 

 tory results ; his plot of turnips drilled with 

 bones having been, in that dry season, most 

 excellent. 



In no part of England is the use of bone 

 dust more extensive, and more absolutely es- 

 sential to the growth of turnips than in "Lin- 

 colnshire. A brief account of its introduction 

 will be found in the following extract from a 

 letter with which I was favoured in the spring 

 of 1836, from Thomas Brailsford, Esq., of 

 Barkwith. 



" The use of bones crushed small enough to 

 pass the drill, began in Lincolnshire about 

 twenty or twenty-five years ago, and may now 

 be considered as general over the greatest part 

 of the county, and universal over the great na- 

 tural divisions the heath, and (the corn brash 

 and upper oolite) the cliff, and the wolds (the 

 chalk and green sand-stone measures of 

 geologists). The effect produced has been 

 wonderful : it has converted large tracts of 

 thin-skinned and weak lands into the most fer- 

 tile districts. The quantity now drilled varies 

 from twenty strikes of half- inch bone, with the 

 dust in Y, per acre ; and it is used almost ex- 

 clusively for turnips, experience having proved 

 that it is more profitably adapted to the culti- 

 vation of that crop than any other. It may be 

 right to add, that, in this county, it is consi- 

 dered that the feeding quality of turnips raised 

 from bones exceeds that produced by dung. 

 Last year," adds Mr. Brailsford, " I used sul- 

 phur with my crushed bones, mixing 7 Ibs. of 

 the former with 100 Ibs. of the latter: a few 

 days before I drilled them with the turnip seed, 

 a moderate fermentation took place, which 

 rendered the sulphur active, and produced a 

 pretty considerably smell of brimstone, and 

 had the effect of mosf effectually defending the 

 young turnip plants from the fly." 



An opinion has been sometimes entertained, 

 that the black grub or caterpillar, which has 

 for the last two or three years been so de- 

 structive of the turnip crop, has been intro- 

 duced in the bones imported from abroad for 

 manure ; and many equally idle and learned 

 papers have appeared to warn the farmer of 

 the dangers he was incurring by their use. A 

 more absurd supposition, perhaps, was never 

 entertained ; for, saying nothing of the total 

 absence of every thing like proof of a single 

 black grub being discovered in an imported 

 bone, all the accurate experiments, and long 

 experience of those who have used bones, ren- 

 der the supposition laughable. 



In the numerous experiments at which I 

 have assisted and witnessed, it has been al- 

 ways found that the black grub appeared 

 -equally numerous among the boned ami un- 

 |boned turnips : that in those portions of the 

 lield. or in the entire field, where bones were 

 drilled with the turnips, the irnihs were not 

 more numerous than on those lands which 

 198 



were manured with common manure, or drilled 

 without any manure at all. 



Again, the very habits of this black grub 

 betray the fact that he is not of animal origin ; 

 he lives, he feeds upon, he is composed of 

 vegetable matter. The farmer well .knows 

 that the grub or caterpillar which is bred on a 

 cabbage or turnip cannot sustain lite, nay, 

 cannot eat animal matters ; it would perish if 

 placed on the most dainty bone. And on Ihe 

 contrary, if a grub bred in a bone is placed, 

 however cautiously and skilfully, on a turnip 

 or cabbage, he dies of absolute starvation, for 

 vegetable matters are not food for him ; his 

 habits, his very nature, make him revolt from 

 the novel food presented to him. 



And again, if he really be imported from 

 Belgium in the bones, he must be able to resist 

 a very considerable temperature; for it has 

 been clearly established, that the turnip fields 

 which have been manured with the refuse 

 bailed bones of the size and cart-grease makers 

 have been just as much covered with the black 

 caterpillars as those which have'been manured 

 with fresh bones. He can live, therefore, even 

 in boiling hot water : or, if he come in the 

 shape of caterpillar eggs, then the believers in 

 this absurd doctrine must be convinced that 

 caterpillar eggs can be hatched even after they 

 have been boiled for hours in a temperature 

 of 212. 



But grubs and black caterpillars are not the 

 first living substances which have been sup- 

 posed to have been imported in the foreign 

 bones. Thus, the Nottingham and Lincoln- 

 shire farmers, many years since, found that, 

 by the use of bones, the growth of white clover 

 was surprisingly encouraged ; and that, in fact, 

 wherever a load of crushed bones was spread, 

 in that place the clover sprung up as if by 

 magic. " They appeared," says his Grace the 

 Duke of Portland, in a letter with which he 

 honoured me in February 1836, "so much to 

 encourage the growth of white clover, that I 

 had almost formed the opinion that it was su- 

 perfluous to sow the seed." The honest farm- 

 ers of that fine district naturally had many a 

 puzzling learned cogitation upon this strange 

 yet regular appearance of the white clover, 

 wherever bones were applied ; but then, they 

 recollected that the bones came from the very 

 land of fine white clover seed; and that the 

 seed must, therefore, as a natural consequence, 

 come hid in the bones. The Lancasterian and 

 Cheshire farmers, however, did not fall into 

 this mistake, since they found that the white 

 clover sprung up just as copiously after the 

 use of the boiled bones, as upon the lands ma- 

 nured with those in a fresh or green state. 



The chemical explanation will occur to 

 every scientific farmer. The white clover 

 abounds in phosphate of lime ; it cannot, there- 

 fore, grow vigorously in soils which do not 

 contain it. Bones supply this necessary food, 

 or constituent; and enable the white clover to 

 contend successfully in the turf with other and 

 ] coarser grasses, and finally extirpate them. 

 There are few soils in England which do not 

 contain the seeds of this plant; it has been 

 ! noticed to spring up in the most unlikely situ- 



! 



