382 I Assembly 



them with the stubble. The average produce of the first six 

 years has been forty-two bushels per acre, and of the last year 

 forty bushels per acre. A horse hoe, or cultivator, or broad 

 share plough, might superc^e the general use of the hand hoe, 

 especially when preparing the land for seed. Phosphate of lime, 

 or guano, or dry wood ashes, or salt petre, might (I suppose) be 

 substituted for the soot occasionally. 



A horse dibbling machine, during the last six years, has plant- 

 ed tliree acres per diem, at nine inckes square, and I presume 

 might be substituted for the expensive hand dibble. 



The seed wheat should invariably be prepared by brining and 

 liming ; or by blue vitriol, a more recent practice, more suitable 

 for machinery ; but both are preventives of smut, and never, no 

 never submit to its attack. 



I give the latter method — To six quarts boiling water add one 

 pound sulphate of copperas or blue vitriol ; put three bushels of 

 wheat into a shallow tub, and when the vitriol is quite dissolved, 

 add the compound to the wheat, intermixing them thoroughly. 



HISTORY OF BOTANY. 



[From Lindley'B Vegetable Kingdom.] 



From the beginning, man has been forming names for plants. 

 Botanists have gathered together, have studied and arranged 

 upwards of 82,000 species of plants, a mighty host whose ranks 

 are daily swelled by new recruits. This vast assemblage has not 

 been gathered together in a few years, it is coeval with man, and 

 we cannot but feel that the study of the distinction between one 

 plant and another commenced with the first day of the creation 

 of the human race. The name Botany is modern, but its anti- 

 quity dates from the appearance of our first parents. The 

 classes first stated were " grass, and herbs yielding seed, and 

 fruit tre^s yielding fruit." Theophrastus (about 2000 years ago) 

 had his water plants and parasites, pot herbs and forest trees, 

 and corn plants. Dioscorides had aromatics, gum-bearing plants, 

 eatable vegetables and corn herbs, and the successors, imitators, 

 and copiers of those writers, retained the same kind of arrange- 

 ment for ages. It was not until 1570 that Lobel, a Fleming, im- 

 proved the ancient modes of distinction. He was soon followed 



