848 Transactjoxs of the American Institute. 



Tecnmseli ; and they have given from 500 to SOO bushels to the acre 

 ever since. He needs one of those light hoes, edged like a saw, that 

 moves both ways. But no tool will permit him to dispense with 

 thumb and finger work. The boys and girls in Wethersfield have a 

 callous on their knees as tough as a horn. I have heard that when 

 the onion season is over this scale comes off, and the}' use it for a 

 soap-dish. If Arthur puts in three-quarters of an acre in onions, he 

 will spoil the best part of forty days in work on the patch. Instead 

 of selling all of them, he had better keep 100 bushels of the smallest 

 for sets next year, and raise 200 or 300 pounds of onion seed. This 

 may return him a dollar a pound. 



Mr. Amos Gore, JSTew Gity, N. Y., said that he did not pull the 

 weeds out, but shoved them in with the finger, 



Ageicultueal Chemistet. 



Professor James A. Whitney, recently a})pointed chemist to the 

 Club, read the following paper, indicating the points where physical 

 science can be of greatest use to the farmer : 



Chemistry is a science vitally allied with agriculture ; for there is 

 no development of plant life that does not involve its action, few 

 occupations of tillage not dependent upon its principles. "When the 

 seed, bursting with moisture and quickened by warmth, sends its 

 slender rootlet into the soil, and unfolds its tiny cotyledons to the 

 sun, its nature and structure are altered, nor is the change in its form 

 gi'eater than the transformation in its chemical composition. In 

 all the subsequent stages of growth, the forming of stem and leaf, of 

 bud and blossom, of fruit and kernel, pod, capsule and ear, each is 

 characterized by a chemical action that causes the constituents of the 

 plant to assume new shapes and form new substances. In like man- 

 ner in tillage, though we may do no more than stir the ground, the 

 moisture that is thus caused to permeate it, the sunlight and heat 

 that penetrate its recesses, the carbonic acid evolved by the decompo- 

 sition of its organic matter the ammonia absorbed by its humus, all 

 act chemically to modify its nature, supply plant food, and promote 

 a vegetable life. After the harvest is gathered we know that the 

 soil is not the same as it was before, because certain substances have 

 been taken from it which must be replaced ere the same crop can be 

 grown again with the same advantage. Being thus intimately con- 

 nected with chemistry in all its varied relations, it is useless to deny 

 that a knowledge of chemistry, teaching us the laws that govern and 



