CHAP. in. APPLICATION OF ARTIFICIAL FERTILISERS. 1019 



soil, and is liable to be washed away by the winter rains. Ammonia 

 salts are retained by the soil (unless the latter is very light and open) 

 until nitrification takes place. Although this does not occur during 

 the winter to a great extent, there is nevertheless no object to be 

 served in risking loss by sowing in winter a soluble manure that 

 begins to act very soon after it is put on in the spring. 



We now proceed to give suggestions for artificially manuring some 

 of the chief farm crops, but it should be understood that it is not 

 intended by any means to indicate that these suggestions are the only 

 ones that may be usefully followed. A whole treatise might be written 

 on the manuring of any one of the crops to be enumerated, and the 

 manures that we have briefly described may be combined in many ways. 

 Furthermore, the same directions for manuring are not equally ap- 

 plicable in different parts of the country. In the north of England, 

 for example, and in Scotland, root crops are manured far more heavily 

 than in the south. Three or four cwt. per acre of artificial manure are 

 sometimes found in the south to be the utmost quantity that can be 

 economically applied to turnips that is to say, that quantity of 

 manure will produce the maximum yield of which the land is capable. 

 In the north, with a different climate and a late short season, 10 and 

 even 15 cwt. of artificial manure are profitably used for turnips. 



The suggestions that follow, therefore, are not to be blindly and 

 unreasoningly adopted, their object being merely to indicate what 

 are generally safe systems of manuring for each of the crops mentioned, 

 the main regard being for efficacy obtained in the simplest and cheapest 

 way. 



Compound or mixed artificial manures, of one kind or another, are 

 prepared by many leading manufacturers, specially suited for stated 

 crops. These preparations are often admirably adapted to their 

 purpose, though the farmer has, naturally, to pay something extra for 

 them beyond the cost of the raw materials of which they are com- 

 pounded. Whether or not it is economical to use them depends greatly 

 upon the price at which they are offered. 



WHEAT. Wheat is a crop which, in ordinary farm practice, may be 

 said to rarely require any special application of phosphatic manure, for 

 it has a longer life than other cereals and is generally able to find 

 sufficient phosphates in the dung with which it is supplied, arid in the 

 residue of the phosphatic manures applied to other crops in the rota- 

 tion. On light soils, however, especially if only a light dunging has 

 been given, some phosphatic manure may well be applied at the time 

 of sowing in the autumn say 2 cwt. per acre of superphosphate on 

 land rich in lime, or 2 cwt. of phosphatic Peruvian guano, or 3 cwt. 

 of fine bone-meal, on land that is poor in lime. 



In spring, wheat should be top-dressed with nitrate of soda. 



Wheat, on strong clay, will stand from 1 cwt. to If cwt. of nitrate of 

 soda per acre without going down, even after a good dunging ; while, 

 if dung has been short, as much as 2 cwt. may often be used with 

 advantage, though most farmers will regard this as too heavy. Such 



