546 [Assembly 



ficial manures as auxiliaries to the ordinary farm yard muck. 

 The remunerating increased produce obtained from the applica- 

 tion of the light manure to the grain crops have created a demand 

 for them that few, some years ago, even dreamed of. Even long 

 before thorough drainage wrought such a change in British agri- 

 culture, by the extension of the green crop culture, it was found 

 that the manure made on the farm was not sufficient to restore its 

 exhausted fertility. The history of the use of auxiliary manures 

 is interesting : we will only state that, so far as we are informed, 

 bones and rape cake were brought into use a little after the mid- 

 dle of the last century. In 1770 Arthur Young says: "Bones 

 are a very odd manure, but farmers find them of great benefit to 

 their clay lands, and they will last twenty years good." Mar- 

 shall, in his " Rural Economy," published in 1795, mentions one 

 farmer on the north-eastern coast of Norfolk who had laid out 

 i:800 ($4,000) in the course of twenty years for rape cake for 

 manure, at the rate of X2 to X3 per ton. They mention the 

 cores of horns crushed* in mills for manure, and oil cake also. 



There is no part of a farmer's business requires more judgment 

 and caution than the selection and purchase of special manures, 

 such as will best suit his own farm, for the difference between 

 two adjoining fields has been found to be great. 



The value of any manure is determined by those substances 

 containing nitrogen and those containing phosphoric acid. The 

 former are most important, although we cannot subscribe to the 

 sweeping conclusion at which Mr. Pusey has arrived, viz: " that 

 substances strengthen vegetation mainly by their contents of 

 nitrogen." &c. 



We express no opinion as to whether plants derive their nitro- 

 gen immediately from ammonia or nitric acid, leaving that to» 

 ehemists, who will have some difficulty in the investigation. 



On Elementary Agricultural Education. 

 Douglas, in his essay on the "Advancement of Society," say& 

 well : " Pre-eminent among the arts, and far surpassing them all^ 

 agriculture ought to occupy special attention, since by its rise 



