THE AGRICULTURAL GAZETTE. 
[Ocr. 10, 
will receive the fullest information from Messrs. 
Way and Oasron ; and we may mention, as regards 
the:specimens that are required, that these gentle- 
men will of course be happy to pay all the expenses 
attending their carriage or collection. 
Few of the practical operations of Agriculture 
have been regarded with wider differences of 
opinion than that of Parine anp Burnine. The 
tone in which its advocates have commended and 
recommended it has been that of the practical man. 
“ I have invariably found it answer. I do not pre- 
tend to explain it on principle ; but I never knew 
it fail. Asa preparation for Turnips it surpasses 
everything ; and the succeeding grain-crop has been 
far superior on part of.a field so treated than on the 
other part which was more highly manured, but 
where it was omitted." Anrnum Youxa speaks of 
it in this way, and adds that some farmers would 
abide the loss of keeping their Grass leys unbroken 
for many years, in order to encourage a sufficient 
turf for the operation. Its opponents on the other 
and speak in the language of theory. * What 
gain can possibly be derived from a system which 
involves so obvious aloss? In the process of burn- 
ing,nine-tenths of the whole soil goes. off in the 
form of smoke, a trifling residuum of ash is all that 
remains; this may, perhaps, from some quality 
obtained in combustion act as a stimulant to a 
single crop, but the permanent loss must surely be 
very great by an operation which actually dissi- 
pates so large a proportion of the whole cultivated 
soil of the field.” 
The theoretical view seems reasonable, but the 
practical one is unanswerable. Science and fact 
seem opposed here to each other: but this is 
impossible ; either the one is not correct Science or 
natural tendency ; but the great art in paring and 
burning, is to prevent this combustion from being 
unite with and carry off the whole of the carbon : 
hich was the-result of 
what we call “growth, is broken up; the vegetable 
mass separates into its original elements, the 
he object of the inquiry. On this they |: 
shape, as clay, sand, potash, soda, lime, sulphur, and 
other substances, according to the character of the 
soil, 
Now to affect this perfect disintegration is. not 
the object of the agriculturist, The good that he 
aims at is twofold ; first, to produce by a more com- 
pendious process, the combustion of fire, what the 
sluggish and partial combustion of vegetable mat- 
ter, which we call decay, would be much longer 
in accomplishing ; secondly, to detach and expose 
the mineral parts of the mass, so as to render them 
more immediately available for fresh combination 
in the subsequent crops. He does not desire to drive 
off organic matter, more than is unavoidable ; but 
he can afford to lose a portion, forthe sake of that 
greatly-increased energy in re-absorbing it which a 
partial combustion occasions. The rapidity of the 
growth of the Turnip, Cabbage, Mangold Wurzel, 
&c., shows that provided the soil is in a favourable 
state, the formation of organic matter is easily uc- 
plished The atmosp! will supply any 
amount of carbon to the plant, and bulk may be 
soon obtained, if the plant be only placed in the 
condition requisite to enable it to absorb it. 
It is by the treatment of the soil that this is to 
be done ; and the virtue resulting from paring and 
bnrning lies in. the extremely energetic state for 
atmospheric absorption, so to speak, in which the 
soil.is left, by the exposure of its mineral and vege- 
table matter in a state greedy for recombination. 
The theorist is right, therefore, when he says 
that much organic matter is parted with by burn- 
ing ; but the:practieal man is right.in the experience 
which teaches him to disregard this loss, for it is 
one which a few months will repair tenfold,if a 
readier disposition to vegetative action can be given 
to the soil, as it can be, by partial incineration. 
The destruction of weeds and their seeds is of course 
a great, but it shall be considered an accidental, 
advantage, obtained by the process; because it is 
practised with advantage on land that may not have 
the additional claim for it of being in a foul state. 
In the conversion of inferior pasture into arable 
land, which an inereasing demand for food in any 
country must inevitably occasion, it can hardly be 
questioned that paring and burning, if skilfully 
performed, and folowed by a green crop is at 
once the most ready and profitable means of 
producing that decomposition of mineral and 
vegetable structure in the soil, which is the neces- 
sary precedent of a rapidly growing crop. The 
questions involved iu:the.proeesssare amongst the 
deepest and the most interesting in agriculture, for 
they embrace the whole of the phenomena of what 
we call ‘growth,’ and the relative agency of organic 
andinorganie matter, by whose combination it is 
produced.—C. W. H. 
Tue Orrration or Lime as a fertiliser is now 
forthe most part satisfactorily understood. Tts in- 
fluence in certain cases, and not in others—the 
equality of its effect, though applied abundantly 
here and scarcely there—the opinion founded upon 
experience which prevails in some districts, that a 
large dose effects a permanent improvement and 
needs not to be repeated; and ‘the idea, equally 
well founded, which obtains elsewhere, that the 
annual application of a small quantity is necessary 
to the maintenance of fertility—have all'been satis- 
factorily explained by the theory, as it now stands, 
of the mode in which it acts, 
We wish more particularly to make a remark or 
two on the application of lime to newly broken up 
land. Whatever theory may assert on the subject, 
there is no doubt of its almost universal fertilising 
influence in such a case. Every body is aware of 
this fact, but that they are ignorant of its explana- 
tion is evident, by the great abuse which is gene- 
rally made of the practice. There can be no doubt 
of the money value to the farmer of a knowledge of 
agricultural theory. From the use and abuse of 
ime as a manure we could bring many illustrations 
of this. "Whether the necessity for its application 
| arise from a faulty texture of soil, which it would 
correct, or from the presence of noxious acid com- 
pounds, which it would neutralise ; whether it would 
act by inducing the formation of useful organic or 
inorganic compounds in the soil, or simply and 
directly by supplying an absent element of food for 
plants, the merely practical man, who is ignorant of 
its theory, necessarily makes in every case the 
same acreable application, and is thus very probably, 
at the very time that he may be boasting of the 
superiority of practice over theory, guilty of that 
which to his more intelligent neighbour appears in 
the one case as the most obvious parsimony, and in 
the other as the grossest extravagance. A fact 
gaseous part, which is by far the greater, becoming 
aeriform and invisible, and the mineral part which 
is very small, ‘being left in its pure and visible 
noticed last year on the farm from which we write, 
throws some light on correct practice in this par- 
ticular, especially as regards the application of 
lime to newly broken up Grass lands. 
All the fields.on this farm, except those of shallow 
soil on the limestone rock, have been limed at the 
rate of upwards of 200 bushels per acre; this was 
done generally in the second and third years after 
they were broken out of Grass, and for the most 
part because the soil was naturally destitute of or 
deficient in calcareous matter. In one of these 
fields a ridge was left unlimed, and that ridge last 
year (the field was in Wheat) remained definitely 
marked out from the others by its blank and sterile 
appearance in the midst of the heavy crop both of 
straw and grain which surrounded it. What made 
the appearance more remarkable was the circum- 
stance that, since the application of the lime, now 
three years ago, the ploughing in that field had 
been altered—the direction of the furrows had 
been altered—so that the unlimed ridge stretched 
across the others and embraced a considerable 
variety of soils—all of them, from its appearance 
agreeing in this that not having been limed, either 
they were positively barren, or their fertility re- 
mained latent. Now, this was the first year that 
this appearance had been noticed. And we may 
draw from. that fact two things. 
1, That newly-broken up land, though it be not 
manured with lime, contains sufficient store of nutri- 
ment for some years’ crops; and, 
2. Thatit is better for newly broken up land ‘to 
remain unlimed for two or three years except under 
special circumstances, for it is already sufficiently 
fertile, and the expense for some years is unneces- 
sary; and the application would probably cause 
an excessive fertility, if one may use that expression, 
such as would injure grain crops by an excessive 
growth of straw. Now the special circumstances 
to which we allude, occur in cases (1) where light 
land on a ferruginous subsoil has remained long 
under stagnant water, the soil is then found to 
contain compounds of iron E sea to vegetation . 
which are decomposed by an application of caustic 
lime, and the elements of which under the influence 
of that application are induced to re-arrange them- 
selves in forms no longer injurious. And (2) in 
cases where, as an effect of stagnant water, peat has 
been formed which, when drained, leaves a soil 
destitute of the mineral elements necessary to 
fertility ; lime and clay are then necessary 
applications. 
The farmer, independently of ali theory on this 
subject, will be perfectly safe in remembering that 
where lime has not hitherto been applied, and where 
the land contains an excess of vegetable matter, or 
has long been injured by staguant water, or is 
destitute naturally of calcareous matter, lime, what- 
ever the mode in which it acts, is sure to havesa 
fertilising influence. Apply lime, therefore, a year 
or two after breaking up your Grass lands, and 
then maintain the fertility thus produced by growing 
each year on half the land crops for consumption 
on the land, by selling only grain and butcher- 
meat off your farm, and by bringing on to it oileake 
and other food for cattle, sheep, and pigs : you will 
thus enrich your manure and increase its quantity. 
SOME INQUIRIES INTO THE EXTENT, CAUSES 
AND REMEDIES OF FUNGI DESTRUCTIVE 
IN AGRICULTURE. 
(Abstract of a Paper read by J. Pripzaux at the British 
Association. ] 
Ist—Ewtent,—Decandolle’s theory of injurious ex- 
eretions having been opposed by many arguments and 
experiments, partieularly those recently published by 
Dr. Daubeny ; that of Liebig, of specifie exhaustion of 
the soil by plants of one species, leaving it fit for another 
which required different ingredients, had been generally 
substituted. Some, however, had taken a middle course, 
and supposed plants to breed animaleules, which they 
left in the soil, and which would feed upon other plants 
of the same species, but not upon those of different 
ones. The writer also, unsatisfied with the theory of 
specifie exhaustion of inorganic ingredients, from the 
occasional unaccountable efficacy of ashes and soot, and 
the inconsistent effects «f inorganic manures, had iu- 
vestigated the organic residues on the soil—after Wheat, 
Barley, Turnips, and Potatoes ; compared them with 
the premature decay of Wheat (where too often eulti- 
vated) in patches, expanding from. centres, like fairy 
rings; and with the notoriety of fungus in the Potato 
disease ; and had thence been led to inquire how far 
such fungus parasites might be the general representa- 
tives of Deeandolle's supposed injurious exeretions. 
To what extent this may be true, the miseroscope- will 
best decide, by examining the roots-and contiguous soil 
of plants after harvest, especially those which have 
ripened seeds, ^ 
2nd—Causes.—Fungi and mueors were supposed to 
bear. somewhat the same relation to vegetable, as mites 
and the like to animal, life—a sort of debased or de- 
graded vitality, produced when the organising vital 
power was not enough predominant over the- disor- 
anising tendency to decomposition, to effect due assimi- 
lation of the nutritious matter presented, but still suffi- 
ciently so to prevent decomposition or decay. ‘The 
constant struggle between the organising vital. foree and 
he decomposing power of chemistry was deseribed, 
