AND H O R T I C U L T U k A L R E Cx I S T E R . 



PUliMSHED BY JOSEPH BRECK & CO., NO. 52 NORTH M.4RKET STREET, (Aghic^lto-a^ Wa 



REHOUSE.) 



Oil. xvni.] 



BOSTON, WEDNESDAY EVENING, JANUARY 15, 1840. 



AGRICULTURAL, 



100 acres. But as yet there is reason to doubt 

 whether any increased quantity beyond 2.5 bushels 

 of small bones produces any increased benefit to 

 the crop ; and no one will venture to assert thai he 

 knows the point beyond which an additional outlay 

 is a mere loss of money and waste of a manure which 

 is becoming daily more .scarce. Again, as to the 

 kind of soil on which bones may profitably be ap- 

 plied, there are some on which they have as utterly 

 failed, as they have signally succeeded on others; 

 but on this important point, as on the precedino-, 

 the valuable answers returned, chiefly by practical 

 farmers, to the questions sent out by the Doncaster 

 Agricultural Association, at the instance of Mr 

 Childers, afford the only authentic data to which 

 we can refer at present for guidance. 



After tlie ground has been duly prepared, there 

 is still ample room for inquiry and for improvement. 

 On the best season of wheat sowing, for instance, 

 there exists great ditference of opinion amongst 

 cultivators. Dr Mavor, in his 'General View of 

 the Agriculture of Berkshire," published no longer 

 ago than the year 1813, states that, on the 

 chalk hills of thnt county, wheat was sewn as ear- 

 ly ;is August Thi.s year a practical farmer of thai 

 very district has given his opinion that it matters 

 not how late wheat is sown, and that December is 

 soon enough. The quantity, too. of grain to be 

 sown is a matter of VHrying practice, and there are 

 hioh autliontiis for thick sowing and far thin. Yet 

 a saving of ha f a bushel of seed, if it can be pro- 

 perly made, will be a gain ofo.s. per acre, or about 

 one-sixth of the average re.it of arable land to the 

 renter, and of ^40,000 qnaite.-.s-, or (100,000/. to the 

 country each year. Now, this question can obvi- 

 ously be solved, not by loose urgmiieiit, or appeals 

 to practice, which is always appealed to while and 

 where each practice obtains, but by careful, extend- 

 ed observation continued through a variety of mild 

 and liu.d wintrr.s, w.t and dry springs and sum- 

 mers. As to the quality of seed t<i be sown, no 

 one can doubt that much good may I. ere be reason- 

 ably expected froui increased attention. 



That well known variety of barley the Cheval- 

 lier, is an instance in point. The discoverer, Dr 

 Chevallier, has obligingly sent the followhuT ac- 

 count of its origin, in reply to an inquiry from our 

 secretary: — " An extraordinary fine ear was oh. 

 served and delected, by a laborer of mine, in the 

 parish of Debenham, 1810; in the .spring of 1820 I 

 planted 27 grains in my garden: in 1825 I planted 

 half an acre of this species, and half an acre ot the 



From the Journal of the English Agricullural Society. 



RESENT STATE OF THE SCIENCE OP AG- 

 RICULTURE IN ENGLAND. 



[Continued.] 



There is another class, however, of manures that 

 serves inquiry as much as any branch of agricul- 

 ral piactice, and which also seems to lend itself 

 are readily to our experiments — tho.ie which are 

 t produced by animals upon the farm, whether in 

 s yard, the stall, or the fold, but which are pro- 

 red by the farmer, eit:icr from the earth, lime, for 

 stance, marl, peat ashes, gypsum, nitre; or, as 

 ; refuse of certain trades, such as bimes, rape dust, 

 lit dust, even woollen rags. The former of these 

 lich may be called the mineral manures, arc now 

 rhaps in more limited use than in pas! times ; still 

 Devonshire and some midland counties, lime is 

 rarded as indispensable, and is carried vorjj long 

 itances over bad roads at a heavy expense ; but 

 rl, which was once so highly vahied, is in many 

 tricts almost forgotten. Not so witli the second 

 ss, which may be called the refuse manures: of 

 se, bwnes in particular, form a new feature in 

 • husbandry, and their consumption is yearly in- 

 «sing. In ihe year 1823 the declared value- o" 

 ti'ie bones imported from fon-iim parts was but i 

 3;i5/. ; in ]8:i2 it was 78.000/.; in 1835 it had 

 ched 15.5,279/. ; in the next year, 1830, it ad- 

 iced to 171,80(1'.; and in the following year, the 

 ; of which we have any account, it amounted to 

 less a sum than 254,(;6o/. This is thf derlured 

 ue, which the real value greatly exceeds; and 

 xc'udes altogether, of course, the large quanti- 

 if this article which must be produced at home, 

 present, bones are chiefly applied to the turnip 

 p, and on some soils their effect is certain and 

 at. Yet no sing'e instance can show the neces- 



and advantage of scientific inquiry more than 



ne.v manure. It is well kn..wii tliat bcnes con- 

 I a large poriion of oil, whicli is usually extract- 

 by boiling; and it might naturally be supposed, 

 :e oily substances are used separately as ma- 

 es, that the natural oil should at least be left in 

 bones, which are intended to be so applied ; 



farrner.s, accordingly, who purchase bond's have 

 iplained that these had fraudulently hern boiled. 

 ■V, cimtrary to expectation, there is renson to 

 bt whether the bones are nut actually improved, 

 . manure by the loss ot that oil, by which, if such • '^"'""'°" ''poafs; the land under precisely similar 

 he truth, their own active principle, whntfver it "^""''"'""^ "f c»lt>vation. > he pruduco of the first 

 would appe.arto bo deadened and shrnthed. ''""""'""' ^" *^ ^"^ """'"'"'" ' "'" "'^ '°'=°"''' *' ^•2• 

 s is a point that may be easily tested : but there I "'e c^l^ '^f^ the first averager! .34 grains; the sec - 



larger que.nlons connected" with the u.se of ! ^"'' '^'^J ''!^ "'■"'"^ °'',.'!?'' '^''^' .'""'^''''"' »«''""■ "> 

 es. They are, as is well known, an expensive 



lire, and their price is rising; but it is by no 

 ns known in what quantity they should he ap- 



five. In the cOur.se of five or six years it was oen- 

 erally accepted and approved in luy neighborhood, 

 as F promoted its fair trial, and charged only the 



d. At 10 bushels t.. the acre, however, if the | ''"™"' """'^^''^^ P^'^t ^1' '^\ 



be 3,5. per bushel, the outlay i.-= already large, * * '' 



loly 30s., a sum probably exceeding the rent i ■ , , - — 



20 bushels it will be .J/., or 300/. for a field of ""'^^ ''""'^ ^' ""'""'^ ^^^^'^°''"^^''" "' "hat order o 



It is not enough for the farmer to know the 

 best manugeciieiit of an individual crop, even of all 



improved knowledge of this order, and a better se- 

 lection, tliat much improvement has already been 

 eflected in British agriculture. It is well known 

 that crops of the same kind following each other 

 become rapidly less productive ; whether by ex- 

 hausting the land of some fertile property, or by 

 depositing, as has been lately supposed, some ex- 

 crementitious matter injurious to the growth of 

 their ov.'n spe('ies, though favorable, perhaps tn the 

 luxuriance of some other tribe. Be this as it may, 

 no one would now think of growing, as formerly, 

 wheat, barley, and oats in succession ; and though 

 Mr Hitchins, land surveyor, of Brighton, states that 

 in his recollection, the tenants of a gentleman liv- 

 ing in Sussex, when a clause was introduced into 

 their leases prohibiting them from growing more 

 than ttuo white crops in succession, complained that 

 they could not hope to defray their rents if fettered 

 by such restrictions, few good farmers at present, 

 on light soils at least, come even up to these lim- 

 its by raising even two white crops, as they are 

 called, in immediate succession. It is on these 

 light lands, indeed, that a due rotation of crois lins 

 so signally succeeded, that, whereas they were for- 

 merly considered of very inferior value, they are 

 now more readily occupied than those heavier soil.s, 

 which, being ill their nature, more suited to the 

 growth of wheat, were once valued more his'hly. 

 And it is as much by the slow and almost insensi- 

 ble ameliorfti-n vf such land, as by any increased 

 breadth of cultivation, that the country has become 

 in any denreo capable of sr.pporting the vast num- 

 bers which have been added to her population. A 

 small p:,rish might be pointed out, in which an aged 

 firmer remembers the time when a single rick was 

 all that It could producs of wheat in one year; 

 whereas, without any increase of its ploiiglied 

 ground, that same parish now yields five nr six 

 yearly. Its sandy .soil was then drifted like snow 

 before the wind; and the scanty barley might be 

 sometimes seen borne away also ; whereas the very 

 fields, slill called '-The Sands," are now, by that 

 glutinous quality which high condition imparts — by 

 the droppings and the tread of the sheep which are 

 fed on the turnips that now grow in garden-like or- 

 der where before was a naked fallow, compacted 

 into a brown and adhesive, thnugh still lighiish 

 loam. But though the Norfolk or alternate or 

 foir course system of husbandry (.■^ocnlled because 

 its simple rotation consists of turnips followed by 

 ■barley, and clover by wb.eat,) has conferred such 

 great though silent benefits on the country, it may 

 be dcuibted whot>,er thit system has not accomplish- 

 ed all that it "is ca'jable of, and must not pass into 

 another. Alre<,dy it has begun to fail in one of 

 Its green cr-'jpj.^ probably in the other. 'I ho red 

 clover, it ci! advnitled, can be no longer rejieaied 

 once I ,, t-(,„f y3;i|.g^ and the substitution of white 

 <^'''* W', or of rye gras i in the alternate fourth year, 

 "c the prolongation of ttie course to five years by 

 sowipg rye gf-i-ass with the clover, and thus leaving 

 the 'around in grass for two years successively, are 

 but. imperfect remedies. The evil, however, is 

 likely to incre ise ; for in Flanders, whence the 



succession they should follow each other, h \, by I red clover was: originally brought over, and where 



