COST OF AMMONIA. 307 



country by the importation of ammonia must appear 

 utterly vain. 



In Germany, a pound of wheat costs at present 4 

 kreutzers (1-J<#.) ; a pound of sulphate of ammonia, 9 

 kreutzers (3%d.) ; and if it were possible with a pound 

 of this salt, added to our ordinary manures, to produce 

 2 pounds more of wheat, then for every outlay of one 

 florin (2s.) in money, the German farmer would receive 

 53 kreutzers (Is. 9d.) in corn. This relation of outlay 

 ,to income is evidently well known in practice, for up to 

 this moment salts of ammonia have nowhere come into 

 general use ; and though many manufacturers of ma- 

 nure add a certain quantity of ammonia to their produc- 

 tions, this is chiefly to humour the fancy of farmers for 

 this substance ; but none of them can tell what advan- 

 tage results from this addition. This prejudice will 

 soon disappear of itself, when farmers have learned to 

 make a proper use of the nitrogenous food which nature 

 supplies spontaneously to the land without any aid on 

 their part. 



The abundant supply of nitrogenous food in the 

 soil, the increase of the same in well-cultivated ground, 

 the examination of rain-water and of the atmosphere, 

 all facts observed in cultivation in general, prove that, 

 even with the highest system of farming, the soil is not 

 exhausted in its store of nitrogenous food, and that con- 

 sequently there is a circulation of nitrogen, like that of 

 carbon, which presents to the farmer the possibility of 

 increasing his store of active nitrogen in the soil. 



The extraordinary effect of superphosphate of lime 

 in augmenting the crops of corn, turnips, and clover, 

 almost without exception, upon all German lands to 

 which these non-azotised manures have been applied ; 

 the operation of the newly-introduced Baker and Jarvis 

 guanos* (which contain no ammonia) ; the action of 

 lime, salts of potash, gypsum, &c., all show without 

 doubt that an accumulation of nitrogenous food has 

 taken place in the soil, the source of which was, until 

 lately, quite obscure. 



* From a communication in the ' Official Gazette,' No. 3, of 1st March, 



