284 



THE AGRICULTURAL GAZETTE. 



[May 4, 



most easily reconcilable with the well-known chemical | 

 fact, that sulphuric acid has a greater affinity for lime 

 than for ammonia. Whichever view of the case is correct, 

 the utility of gypsum as a manure rests upon evidence too 

 conclusive toadmit of doubt. The value, then, of sulphate of 

 ammonia as a manure is very great, always bearing in 

 mind that it must be used in combination with the other 

 elements of plants ; and that, given alone, its effects will 

 only be perceptible in proportion as those other elements 

 »re present or absent from the soil ; and also remembering, 

 that being an azotised manure, it will have a much greater 

 influence over a corn than a root crop. 



Having settled this point, our next inquiry is the source 

 from whence the farmer is to obtain a supply of this valu- 

 able manure. He has it in soot, but the supply of this 

 article is limited : he has it in Peruvian guano, but this 

 is expensive. The ingenuity and enterprise of Mr. Potter 

 has brought it into the market in large quantities in the 

 form of " Potter's Guano," which is allowed to be the best 

 of all the artificial manures. But the farmer can procure 

 for himself, at little cost or trouble, any quantity of this 

 manure, by the action of sulphuric acid upon urine, or gas- 

 water. Of the latter I shall say nothing, because the 

 supply is naturally limited to large towns ; but the former 

 is within the reach of every one, and by its means the 

 farmer can make extemporaneous guano in any quantity 

 he chooses. — C. R. Bree, Stowmarket. 



tion it is considered the best water for a voyage. If opened 

 before it is perfectly settled, after being sick, it is danger- 

 ous, and require-* a strong stomach fortified by brandy or 

 rum to swallow the high smelling beverage. Is not this 

 somewhat analogous to the pond ? — Falcon. 



Equivalent Values of Food. — In No. 12 Ag. Gaz., the 

 value of Pea-stiaw, in comparison with Hay, in point of 

 nutriment, is mentioned. Professor Johnson, in his 

 " Agricultural Chemistry," has given the following table 

 of equivalents, which afford equal nourishment to animals, 

 and may be interesting to some of your readers, if you 

 think fit to insert it. He takes 10 as his standard for 

 Hay, and sometimes gives a varying equivalent. 







Pounds. 







Pounds. 



Hay 



• 



. 10 



Carrots . 



• 



25 to 30 



Clover Hay . 



• 



. 8 to 10 



Turnips 



» t 



50 



Green Clover 



• 



. 45 „ 50 



Cabbage 



« 



20 „ 30 



Wheat-straw 



• 



. 40 „ £0 



Peas and Beans 



• • 



3 „ 5 



Bnrley.-traw 



• 



. 20 „ 40 Wheat 



9 



5 „ 6 



Oat-straw . 



• 



. 20 M 40 Barley . 



• • 



5 .. 7 



Pea-straw 



• 



• 10 „ 15 



Oats • ■ 



• 



4 „7 



Potatoes 



* 



. 20 



Indian Corn 



» # 



5 



Old Potatoes 



• 



. 40 



Oil-cakes 



• 



2„ 4 



—J. B. X. 











Incendiarism,- 



—It has often occurred to 



me 



that if 



Home Correspondence. 



Prevention of the Attack of Fly on Young Turnips.— 

 In 1815, 1 sowed a richly manured field with Turnip seed ; 

 the plants at first looked well and thriving, but soon 

 disappeared. The flies were numerous. My second sowing 

 exactly resembled the first; 1 sowed for the third time, 

 but the season being too far advanced, a poor crop was 

 produced. This unfortunate year led me to make many 

 inquiries, the answers to which are not worth recording. 

 In 1816, the weather was more favourable for our hot 

 ■tone-brash land ; part of my seed was drilled, part sown 

 broadcast ; a tolerable crop appeared, but the fly began 

 their attack. Fearful of these destructive insects, I tried 

 different experiments copied from the newspapers, but all 

 were useless. It now occurred to me that a practice whieh 

 my father formerly adopted with respect to his Cabbage 

 plants might be successful with the Turnips likewise. I 

 began his plan of sowing lime over the plants ; and where- 

 ever the lime had been dusted, which was in several parts 

 of the field, not one was touched. Year after year I 

 followed up this system, extending my experiment over a 

 large portion of the field, till I found it to answer so 

 completely that I adopted it altogether. But the difficulty 

 of sowing riddled lime upon a large scale now appeared 

 a considerable obstacle. It was a tedious task, and also 

 one which the men set about with great reluctance, as 

 from the heat of the weather and the nature of the lime, 

 their hands were burnt, and in other respects they were 

 greatly inconvenienced. 1 now turned my thoughts to a 

 machine ; my first efforts failed. 1 persevered, however, 

 year after year, till I completed a machine to my satisfac- 

 tion, which will sow any given quantity of lime. Four 

 or five days after sowing, should vegetation be quick — the 

 Turnips will begin to appear. Swedes, however, are a day 

 or two later; let the field be examined without fail, every 

 morning, and as soon as there appears a sufficient crop, the 

 lime must be applied. It will not do to wait till all are up, 

 as by this delay the whole maybe lost, owing to the great 

 rapidity with which the fly destroys the crop when they 

 once attack it. It must be remarked, that the fly and 

 other insects devour the Turnips as soon as the plant comes 

 up, before the first two leaves can expand. I mention this 

 circumstance as proving the necessity of losing not a day. 

 Lime for dusting the Turnips should be procured some 

 time previous to sowing ; let it be kept in the dry ; a 

 few days before it will be wanted, let it be slaked and 

 riddled into carts, thus, probably, it will not interfere with 

 the business of haymaking in which the farmer is then 

 engaged. My proportion of lime i3 six bushels, mea- 

 sured before slaking, to an acre. It must be remarked, 

 that I sow it only on the rows, my system being the drill, 

 but I calculate ten would be sufficient for a broadcast acre 

 with my machine. Hoers can, with much greater accuracy, 

 perform their work in a drilled crop. Another disadvan- 

 tage of the broadcast system is, that the hoeing cannot 

 take place so soon by five or six days as with a drilled 

 piece. I here subjoin a calculation of expenses for dust- 

 ing with lime ten acres: — 



Eight quarters of lime . . . . 



Carriage ^ . 



Two men, slaking and riddling . 



Beer 



Horse, for sowing the lime . . . 

 One boy, for ditto 



£0 16 



o 





 

 

 



5 

 3 

 2 

 4 

 1 





 

 

 

 

 



d£\ 11 



I would employ, on a large farm, two machines, two 

 horses, and two boys— one to fill the boxes, whilst the 

 other is working the machine. I beg to add, that more 

 than ten acres could be dusted iu one day of eight hours 

 by my plan, with one machine, and eighteen or more with 

 two machines. — Forehead Singer, Frome. 



Fond Water. — Water in a state of fermentation caused 

 by the presence of vegetable matter, must be unwhole- 

 eome, and tend to produce disease ; but after this has 

 ceased there is no reason why the watershould be injurious. 

 I have often seen, and been surprised, at horses and cows 

 preferring to drink from the pond in a farm-yard or field, 

 instead of quenching their thirst at a running brook. 

 Donkeys, however, show a more delicate taste, and go to 

 the clear stream. The Thames water which is used on 

 board a ship, putrefies in the cask before it becomes fit for 

 use. After it has gone through a process of this descrip- 



partirs who have insured their property, would be at the 

 trouble o p'aciiur, in a conspicuous part of their farm- 

 buildi»fg«, ,4 tlw stamped tins" usually given by the In- 

 surance Companies, there would be less likelihood of in- 

 cendiarism, as tiiey would, if observed, show how little 

 would be accomplished by the act. — Ganstead. 



Earth as Food. — A short time since a cow which I had 

 kept during the winter in-doors, got loose, and the first 

 thin* it did was to go and eat a quantity of garden- 

 mould. It appears to me that we may obtain a valuable 

 hint from this fact ; the natural mode of feeding of the 

 cattle is likely to bring up a quantity, more or less, of 

 earth with the herbage, and this may be as useful to the 

 cow as the ashes recommended in your last Number, are 



to the pig-— Toby. 



How to destroji Rabbits. — Sow the headlands of the 



fields adjoining the woods, and any odd corner in the 

 neighbourhood, or plant the banks of hedge-rows and sides 

 of ditches with rape ; every young one that eats of it will 

 become diseased (pot-bellied), and if it be a wet season, 

 will die of the complaint in the liver similar to the rot in 

 sheep. If a few old males are put for about a week 

 into a stable on straw, where a thoroughly-mangy dog has 

 been confined, they will be fully inoculated with the com- 

 plaint, and when turned out again will spread the malady 

 to the whole warren, thus rendering the skins of the 

 animals valueless ; which will, I dare say, be alone suffi- 

 cient to bring a bad neighbour to a sense of justice, for 

 most likely the keeper^is paid by the rabbits fed at other 

 people's expense. I once threatened these measures, and 

 was laughed at ; but in a year I had the laugh on my 

 side ; an impudent keeper was discharged ; I had a 

 liberal allowance for damage, and made a friend of a very 

 bad neighbour. I consider rabbits the greatest enemy the 

 landlord has ; they'make tenants dissatisfied, they tempt 

 idle boys into their first trial of poaching, and their first 

 theft of their employer's rat-trap; then comes the lying 

 out at nights to watch their ill-gotten property, the dis- 

 posal of it to publicans for spirits, followed by an intro- 

 duction to older thieves and ruin. But they are also 

 game destroyers, by enticing cats, the very worst of 

 poachers, from great distances, and which never leave off 

 night hunting, however well fed at home ; as for amuse- 

 ment, they will kill young pheasants and partridges when 

 they know their way to the woods. I have killed them ten 

 miles from the house in which they had been fed on the 

 same day. Fox-hunters preserve rabbits in hopes of 

 feeding them ; but poachers will set traps for profit, vil- 

 lagers in their gardens for self-defence, and many a cub 

 has in consequence been caught and buried, causing blank 

 days and loud complaints of ill-preserved covers ; so that 



in all cases they are worthless. — A Sportsman. 



Another correspondent, Mudie, states the following as 

 a means for destroying rabbits : " 1. Large vermin-traps 

 — the Norfolk (so called), are best, baited with their 

 most favourite food, Carrots cut up and laid over them. 

 2. Carrots cut and laid in small heaps in the underwood 

 after having been steeped in a solution of arsenic for 42 

 hours, but I fear the poor picking up the poisoned ones 

 and eating them. 3. Turn into their furrows from six 

 to a dozen ferrets, and let them run wild. 4. Burn sulphur 

 in their barrows and stop them." 



Guano.— In the latter end of December, 1842, I 

 ploughed a lea-field, and sowed it with Wheat ; and in 

 the month of May following, it looked stunted and bad. 

 At this period I sowed over it guano at the rate of 2 cwt. 

 to the acre, and in 14 days an entire change had taken 

 place, the Wheat looking green instead of yellow. It con- 

 tinued for some time to improve, and every little piece 

 that was missed in the manuring was seen from the oppo- 

 site hill ; and I am sure, from the application of this 

 manure (costing about 30s.), the crop was improved full 

 30 per cent. Guano had the same effect on Barley on a 

 light soil, and a piece of Oats on a stiff clay soil. In the 

 second week of May last, I tried it in a field of Grass, 

 using 3 cwt. per acre against forty tons of Devonport 

 dung ; and I can be positive in stating that the 

 part on which the guano was used produced a far 

 better crop of Grass than where the dung was used. 

 I have found guano very useful as a liquid manure. I 

 have dissolved it in spring water at the rate of 1 lb. to 3 

 gallons for 24 hours, which has produced a fine piece of 

 Grass ; but the best and most convenient plan is (where 

 persons possess tanks for containing the liquid manure 

 from the stables, &c.) to put it in the tank, about 1 lb. 



J ficiently high to mow. I likewise sowed a field ofwhlte 

 Turnips, one part with dung, the other with guano, 2 cwt 

 per acre. The guano produced a much better crop ihau 

 the dunged part, allowed to be the case by several farmers 

 who saw the field. — William May, Saltash. 



Yew.— Seeing in your Paper some remarks made by a 

 correspondent on the poisonous effects of Yew eaten bv 

 cattle in a withered state, and the harmlessness of the 

 same plant if eaten green from the living tree, I am in- 

 duced, for the benefit of your readers, to offer facts on 

 this subject which have come under my observation. 

 About 12 months &ince, one of our team-men turned oat 

 in the morning with four young good-constitutioned 

 horses to harrow some ground, and having occasion to 

 get his harrows from an adjoining field, across a cart- 

 road, before he could commence work, he incautiously 

 allowed the horses to nip off and eat the most tender 

 living shoots of two bushy young Yews, growing close by; 

 in a few minutes, however, he had them all regularly at 

 work, and nothing unusual occurred for about two hours 

 when one of the horses suddenly dropped down dead. 

 Being in the field, and not knowing the cause of this 

 catastrophe, I ordered the horses to work a distance off 

 while the dead body was being flayed ; but I had not got 

 far on my road to the collar-maker before another horse 

 fell dead suddenly as the other. I was then informed by 

 the man that the horses had been cropping off the tops of 

 the living Yew-trees ; we got the other horses home spee- 

 dily, and administered liberal doses of castor oil, which I 

 supposed proved a good antidote, as they showed no symp- 

 toms of hurt afterwards. An experienced farmer, now 

 by my side, bears testimony to the same effect (from what 

 has come under his particular notice) of valuable horses 

 being destroyed from the same cause, under somewhat 

 similar circumstances. — George Crompton. 



On Marl as a Manure. — Most farmers are aware of 

 the value of marl as a manure on light soils, but it is not 

 so generally known how to apply it to the greatest advan- 

 tage. It is never safe to make use of marl which has not 

 been analysed, until it has been burned. This pro ess is 

 too well known to need description, I will, therefore, 

 confine myself to stating, as briefly as possible, the reasons 

 which render it necessary. On a late visit in Cheshire 

 I ascertained from the actual experience of many of the 

 farmers of that county, that some descriptions of marl 

 have a tendency to destroy a good soil altogether. At 

 first, I was inclined to believe that this was owing to the 

 mode of its application, which consists in strewing it ever 

 the meadows, or arable land, in large moist lumps. It was 

 quite clear to me that such an application must tend to 

 injure tbe land by excluding the air ; but I could hardly 

 think that this could be the sole cause. To ascertain this, 

 I took from the pit a piece of the marl for the purpose of 

 analysis ; and on investigation I found it to consist of 

 60 per cent, of alumina, 30 per cent, of sand, 5 per cent, 

 of gypsum, 2J per cent, of red oxide of iron, 1 per cent, 

 of protoxide of iron combined with sulphuric acid, and a 

 very perceptible quantity of potash. Now, it is evident 

 that the only substance contained in this marl, which 

 could prove pernicious, was the protoxide of iron, the 

 baneful effects of which on vegetation have been distincily 

 proved. We know that plants cannot live in soils devoid 

 of oxygen ; if, therefore, a salt is present, which consumes 

 all the oxygen of the soil, the roots of the plants wi I 

 necessarily be deprived of it. Such being the case with all 

 soils containing the sulphate of protoxide of iron, barren- 

 ness is the natural consequence. Another cause of 

 barrenness is the putrefaction of vegetable remains m 

 soils in which no oxygen is present. Putrefaction being 

 a highly deoxidising process absorbs the oxygen from all 

 bodies capable of yielding it, thus converting red oxide ot 

 iron, a useful ingredient of a soil, into protoxide of iron, 

 which is a deadly poison to plants. I have found that all 

 marls which tend to destroy the fertility of a field, con- 

 tain protoxide of iron, and the only remedy consists m 

 thoroughly burning the marl which does so contain it. 

 For fields, which have been rendered barren by this means, 

 the only remedy is frequent ploughing and mixing wit 

 burnt lime. — A. Bernays, Manchester. 



On Guano.— The value of guano as a manure is no 

 pretty well established, and it has been owing solely to 

 high price of the Peruvian guano that it has not Dec 

 more generally used. It has been asked whether it a 

 not impoverish the soil ; but I think that this <l ues: "|" , 

 easily answered in the negative. Guano contains i J 

 all the organic and inorganic ingredients rec l u ' s,te nH .: es . 

 healthy development of a plant, in the relative qoani . a . 

 it contains, therefore, in itself nearly all the nuin 



the addition of alkalies, if the soil is deficient there^,^^ 

 the guano cannot supply the whole demand tor ^ 

 made by the plant ; in such cases an equal weign ^ 

 bonate of soda added to the guano will prove 

 greatest advantage. The arrival of the African guano ^ ., 

 no doubt, bring it into more general use. 1 oei 

 selling at from 6/. 10.. to 71. per ton at Lijfrpoo , a t 

 price It is cheaper than the Peruvian at 10/; that is to ^ 

 10/. worth of African guano will produce more i« 

 ton of Peruvian at 



from 20 to 25 per cent 



cent, of sand. It would be advantageous to mil i 

 some pounded chloride of lime, to tix the Ireea"^.^ 

 Sulphate of lime will not d>> for this purpose, as it r I ^ 

 too much water for solution. Guano thus prej >a_ ^ 

 chloride of lime should be kept in a dry place, i ^ 



mer will do well to buy his guano at a «5*^JfLria* 

 direct from the ship, as he will otherwise not oe ■ be 



guano will produce more llltlu . 

 10/. The African guano contains 

 nt. of water, and from 12 to i 1 



, i . * _ _._ „ c fn mlX H Wlli * 



guano to 8 gallons of water. This I found to produce a wrccv uuu. vu« »...,-, — -- - l nwever, 



most excellent crop of Grass, which was in six weeks suf- of obtaining a genuine article ; should he, 



