No. 7. The French Tlieory of Renovation. — Tlie Bee-Hive. 



213 



For the Farmers' Cabinet. 

 French Theory of Renovation. 



On the first publication of the French The- 

 ory of Renovation, many persons were pre- 

 pared to treat the system with ridicule, and 

 others expressed their contempt for a notion 

 so perfectly irrational ; in a little while, how- 

 ever, it was discovered that the thing had 

 long been practised in this country, and that 

 there was nothing new in it, for Mr. A. had 

 planted potatoes on the sod and covered them 

 with straw, and Mr. B. had allowed his crop 

 of grass to fall and rot on the ground, thus to 

 replenish the soil at a trifling expense, &c. ; 

 and all had benefited amazingly by a system, 

 which the French seem to have an idea has 

 something original in it. Now, whatever 

 may be the result of experiments making in 

 many parts of the country, to ascertain whe- 

 ther wheat can be brought to perfect maturi- 

 ty merely by sowing the seed on land un- 

 ploughed and undressed, and covering it with 

 a portion of the last year's crop of straw — to 

 say nothing of the rationality of the attempt 

 to raise it on a pane of glass, thus prevent- 

 ing entirely all communication with the earth, 

 it must be permitted me to say, I consider 

 the subject as bearing most favourably on the 

 system of top-dressing in general, a system 

 •which a few years ago would have been 

 scouted as the most irrational and wasteful 

 that could be devised, by which the tiller of 

 the soil would incur a loss of more than half 

 his manure, by permitting the winds of hea- 

 ven to dissipate those elastic gases which are 

 continually arising and flying off by their 

 levity, little dreaming of the present theory 

 and very prevalent belief, that the gases 

 which are alone valuable, are those which, 

 by their density, are confined so near the sur- 

 face as to be always within reach of the plants 

 growing thereon ; while those of a more vo- 

 latile nature, which are not taken up and 

 held as it were in solution by the denser 

 gases, after performing their allotted parts, 

 are liberated, and are carried off' into the at- 

 mosphere, there to form fresh combinations, 

 and become fit again to take their station in 

 the wonderful and never-ceasing round of 

 Renovation. 



These reflections bring to my remembrance 

 a circumstance, the result of which I lately 

 witnessed while on a visit to a friend in a 

 distant county, which is, I think, worth re- 

 cording as *' a fact." On walking over a clo- 

 ver field which had then been mown the se- 

 cond time for seed, and the crop raked into 

 wind-rows, I observed that a square space, 

 about an acre, was much more thickly set, 

 and the leaves of a more vigorous appearance 

 than any other portion of the field, and seeing 

 that the great thickness of the crop was 



m:u'-LHl with the exactitude of a line, I point- 

 ed It out to my friend from a distance, as the 

 work of a bad mower, who had left a part of 

 the crop on the land, not having cut " the 

 bottom half inch;" but on a closer inspection 

 I could perceive that the line ran across 

 the swathes, and not with them ; so that this 

 could not be the cause of the very great dif- 

 ference in the appearance of the crop, which 

 was found to proceed altogether from a clo- 

 ser plant of much more vigorous growth ; on 

 which my friend remarked — " The clover- 

 seed with which this field was sown was 

 saved by myself, was carefully cleaned in the 

 barn, and taken immediately from thence and 

 sown in the field ; but my seeds-man scatter- 

 ed it too plentifully at first, and the conse- 

 quence was, the clean .seed was all exhausted 

 and the square which you see was left unsown ; 

 but not being willing to leave this portion of 

 the field without a crop, and having no seed at 

 hand, I took the clover-chaft' from the barn 

 and scattered it very thickly over the unsown 

 portion of land, thinking there might be a few 

 seeds contained amongst it; and you now see 

 the result, after two crops of far heavier bulk 

 have been removed from the spot before us." 

 Here was an exemplification of the French 

 theory before our eyes, as well as an open 

 volume in favour of top-dressing, and I thought 

 I could not do better than appropriate a leisure 

 half-hour to the detail of the fact, for the 

 amusement, perhaps the information and bene- 

 fit, of the readers of the pages of the Cabinet 



Jan. 28, 1842. R- ClaYES. 



For tjie Farmers' Cabinet. 



The Bee-Hive. 



We often hear it said that bees will not 

 work downward — that it is contrary to their 

 nature — but an English Journal informs us 

 that a Mr. Jeston recommends this mode in 

 preference to that of raising the boxes — he 

 says, " I place a board, half an inch in thick- 

 ness, and 18 inches square, perforated with two 

 holes an inch in diameter, over a butter-tub, 

 and upon that place the hive as early as 

 March, as the bees have a great dislike to any 

 disturbance of their arrangement. I last 

 year took upwards of 40 lbs. of honey in this 

 way, and left an ample supply for the swarm 

 to subsist on during the winter, although the 

 season was remarkably bad. And in this way 

 have I carried off the prizes for honey at the 

 Henley Horticultural Society for the last four 

 years. This plan will prove a good substi- 

 tute for the modes of 'rearing' according to 

 the usual custom ; it has the advantage of ob- 

 taining a supply of honey from the strong 

 swarms, as well as from the old hives," The 

 time will soon be at hand to make the expe- 

 riment. John Ellis. 



