364 



THE AGRICULTURAL GAZETTE. 



to infer from the evidence of these experiments, that 

 there is no root-crop to which the artificial manures can 

 be more profitably applied than white Carrots, and that 

 they will more than repay the additional cost by increased 

 bulk of produce ; bat experiments are still wanting to 

 determine which is the most suitable, and what propor- 

 tions should be used. — L. Vernon Harcourt. 



Home Correspondence. 



Frauds on Farmers. — There is an article vending at 

 this time in Hull, under the name of " bone ashes, per- 

 fectly genuine," and finding a ready sale for the Turnip 

 crop, which I have examined, and which certainly does 

 not contain so much as 5 per cent, of real bone ash I It 

 appears to consist almost entirely of crushed lime, 

 stone !! This is a case precisely analogous to that men- 

 tioned by Mr. Solly, and reported and commented upon 

 in the Chronicle a few weeks since. — Alas for the 

 farmers who happen to get hold of this rubbish ! Pray 

 lose no timein wamingyourvery numerouscircleof readers 

 against what I must denominate a shameful attempt at 

 fraud, and one that I should certainly have fallen a victim 

 to, had it not been for the assistance of a little chemical 

 knowledge. — W. P. 



Wooden Shoes. — I remember reading once in an old 

 collection of fables about a town that was either besieged 

 or about to be besieged by an enemy, when a consulta- 

 tion was held to devise means how the inhabitants might 

 best defend themselves against the attacks of their foes. 

 The mason said that nothing was equal to stone and 

 lime ; the carpenter declared that timber was far better ; 

 while the shoemaker thought that there was nothing so 

 good as leather. Now, in the fortifications of the lower 

 parts of what honest John Bunyan would call the town of 

 Mansoulj your correspondent, " Martin Doyle," recom- 

 mends timber. Whatever sort of materials should com- 

 pose the rampart, bastions, ravelins, demilune, vamps, 

 souterrains, &c, and how they should be defended, I 

 ■will leave it for others to decide ; but this I will say, 

 from experience in the matter, that in defending the 

 lower part of the citadel from the dismounting batteries 

 of rheumatism, or the ricochetting batteries of cough, 

 or the breaching batteries of consumption, there is 

 nothing like leather. I have examined many varieties of 

 feet-defenders, from the ditching clog to the satin slip- 

 per, Highland brogues and Isle of Man sandals ; neither 

 have I confined my examination to the boots and shoes 

 of our own country, but have examined the flag shoe of 

 Russia, the wooden shoes of France and Flanders, the 

 snow shoes of North America, the ornamental cloth-boots 

 of the American Indians, the bone-heeled slippers of 

 Afghanistan, the leopard-skin shoes of Hindustan, the 

 turned-up points of China, &c. I have had, perhaps, as 

 much pleasure in studying the anatomy of an old 6hoe, 

 as Knight had in the study of vegetable physiology, or 

 Cuvier in organic remains. No doubt the different pur- 

 suits are not for one moment to be put in the balance 

 with each other, but a poor man is sometimes obliged to 

 turn his attention to subjects which a rich man would 

 not deign to look at. Upwards of four years ago I pur- 

 chased a pair of shoes for seven shillings : after using 

 them twelve months at " kirk and market" I turned 

 them into a pair of common working shoes, and they are 

 still my working shoes, and are on my feet at the time I 

 am writing this notice of them ; and how long we may 

 remain together, I know not, but if no particular change 

 happen, it may be for years yet. I have made a calcula- 

 tion of the number of miles we have travelled together, 

 and find the average to be about a thousand miles a year, 

 besides the fatigue they have undergone in peat holes, 

 digging, trenching, hedging, &c. I have kept them in 

 repair myself ever since I received them from the shoe- 

 maker, and find that it costs one shilling and sixpence 

 a-year to keep them in repair. They afford me a double 

 comfort, namely, that of wearing old shoes, which are 

 commonly easy for the feet, and of being seldom in the 

 shoemaker's shop. Now this is, I think, something better 

 than M Martin Doyle's " wooden shoes, both for comfort 

 and cheapness. About ten or twelve years ago clogs were 

 introduced into the part of the country where I°reside, 

 and were for a time in a fair way for supplanting 

 leather shoes. They were recommended by medical men. 

 But the clog mania has now disappeared, and they are 

 scarcely seen except with a few ditchers and dyers ; and 

 it is very probable that wooden shoes would share the 

 same fate, unless persons were trained from infancy to 

 use them. When a working man has a wife and family, 

 it is a great saving to him when he can keep their shoes 

 in repair ;—the children are more comfortable. The 

 money that is saved in drugs and poultices is sometimes 

 not a little ; and good shoes often keep the doctor from 

 knowing the road to the house. It gives me great plea- 

 sure to see my wife and family well shod, and I have 

 | B B e l"J et ' nor ever *>". I hope, look upon them as an 



I R ™ DCe ' aS man ? ad ' ertis "*> disciples of Malthus, 

 I suspect, appear to do.— A Workina Man 



Hooks. 



Working Man. 



« Ttf. a in„J I Respondent " S." p. 171, states— 

 whiVh f.T 1 h0wl ° n S men will argue about matters 

 which facts only can decide, and when the facts of the 

 question about rooks might be so easily ascertained, by 

 examimngthe crops of these birds. It appears tome 



I"! t be / 0Un ^° easy a matter to ascertain 

 the real quantity of corn that there is in the crop of the 

 crow, because it will require the contents to be analysed 

 before the answer can be proved clearly to the question, 

 What is the quantity of meal from corn, and what is the 

 quantity of other matter from the worms and grub* in 

 the crop of the crow ? My attention was directed to'the 

 following interesting fact some years ago, by a Rev. gen- 



house, and who pointed out to me the husks of corn lying 

 upon the ground in lumps, which had been discharged 

 from the mouths of the crows from the top of the trees : 

 —the corn undergoes this operation in the mouth of the 

 crow ; the crow performs a similar work to man, in pre- 

 paring the corn for his food, so that only the real meal 

 passes into the crop of the crow. If any of your readers 

 will examine any rookery in their neighbourhood, where 

 corn is much cultivated, I have no doubt that they will 

 find the husks of the corn as above stated ; there is no 

 doubt but the crow destroys a large quantity of grain in 

 seed-time. Though we have now abundance of rooks, 

 they appear not to destroy the Turnip-fly, which is well 

 known as a destructive insect to the farmer. In p. 268, 

 I stated that four acres of Swede Turnips were destroyed 

 by the fly ; now, this field was the second field from a 

 rookery, and I consider this to be a proof that rooks are 

 not advantageous to the farmer. I have inclosed 

 the husks of the corn as discharged from the mouth 

 of the rook. — Facile. [Certainly, the specimen received 

 from our correspondent is a very interesting and com- 

 plete proof of the fact, that rooks do feed to a consider- 

 able extent on seed — Oats, Barley, &c, at this time of 

 the year.] 



Wheat grown on a hard plain surface without Soil, the 

 Seed being covered with Straw. — This has been done on 

 a pane of glass, the decomposition of the straw, (with 

 the exception, of course, of rain, atmosphere, &c.) being 

 its only source of nutriment. This discovery, developed 

 in France three years ago, as reported in a newspaper 

 paragraph of that date, was believed at the time to have 

 been of such importance that a new era was supposed to 

 have arrived in Agriculture ; that henceforth there would 

 be no need of tillage, or any artificial stimulants to the 

 soil — nothing would be required bu f hard smoothly- 

 rolled land, and the covering of straw for the seeds. 

 Mow is it that we have heard nothing more of this ? — 

 J. R. L. [We remember the paragraph very well ; and 

 the natural inference to be drawn from the subsequent 

 silence which has prevailed on the subject of it is doubt- 

 less the true one. The experiment, which was, we think, 

 performed by a member of some Belgian Agricultural 

 Society, gave results, if we may believe the report, which 

 must certainly be interesting to those who delight in testing 

 the great powers which Nature often puts forth on an 

 emergency ; but the idea that it could be of the smallest 

 use to Agriculture is utterly absurd.] 



Ammonia. — In one of your Leading Articles of last Sa- 

 turday's Chronicle, an account is given of some experi- 

 ments upon the growth of Turnips with manure in dif- 

 ferent states, and in one of these, where the ammonia 

 was driven off by the addition of caustic lime before 

 using it, the produce appears to be quite as favourable as 

 where the whole of the ammonia was retained. In the 

 conclusions you draw from these results, you state "that 

 after all that has been said about the importance of am- 

 monia in manures, the crops are as good where that prin- 

 ciple is driven off as where it is retained by fixing." 

 This appears to me, hasty and inconclusive, as applied 

 to crops in general ; for although in the present case the 

 absence of ammonia is not felt, still, I think, we have no 

 right to suppose that its absence would not be felt by 

 other crops, as it appears from Drs. Daubeny and Play- 

 fair's tables of the constituent parts of different vegeta- 

 bles, given in Dr. Smith's paper, published in the Chro- 

 nicle of the 20th April, that Turnips only contain about 

 1 per cent, albumen, and consequently require little or 

 no nitrogen for their nourishment ; such, however, would 

 not be the case with the cereal or leguminous tribes, as 

 Wheat, Barley, and Oats, or Peas and Beans, which, 

 according to the same authorities, contain from 12 to 30 

 per cent, nitrogen, and would, therefore, require a con- 

 siderable supply of some substance like ammonia, rich in 

 nitrogen. — An Original Subscriber. 



Prickly Comfrey.—ln answer to the inquiry of a 

 " Subscriber," in a former Number of your Paper— I 

 have always found Symphytum asperrimum (the Prickly 

 Comfrey), as well in a calcareous loam as in a clayey 

 bog-soil, to be abundantly prolific of seed ; but from the 

 peculiar habit of the plant, it is a difficult task to collect 

 the seeds. The very numerous flowers grow on a long 

 curved spike, and not more than two or three of them 

 are taken at one time. Those blossoms which open 

 first form and ripen their seed (which drops out of the 

 capsule nearly as soon as it is ripe) long before the 

 flowers on the extremity of the spike have opened ; so 

 that there can be no general harvesting of the seed ; but, 

 on the contrary, if you cut off the spike even at the 

 most favourable time, you will get only one or two ripe 

 seeds, perhaps none, with several dry and withered cap- 

 sules from which the seeds have fallen, and many buds 

 quite tender and unformed. But if you have the patience 

 to examine the spikes separately and frequently, you 

 may gather from each of the numerous branches one or 

 two ripe seeds at very short intervals of time, and so col- 

 lect a considerable quantity of seed in the course of the 

 season ; or if you cause the ground for a yard round 

 each plant to be dug up and broken fine, and to be raked 

 over towards the end of autumn, you will have in the 

 succeeding spring an abundant spontaneous growth of 

 seedlings from the fallen seeds. But the seedling plants 

 do not yield a produce much worth cutting before the 

 third year ; wherefore the experiment of the value of the 

 plant may be more quickly proved by making a planta- 

 tion of the cut roots of old plants. Both Symphytum 

 officinale, and Symphytum echinatum, which last has 

 been recommended by a most skilful and well-informed 

 experimental farmer, Mons. Vilmorisi, 30, Quai de la 



[JtTNE 1, 



asperrimum. Whether S. echwi^rif^rri^rp^ 

 cattle, I have as yet had no experience ; but wrl to 



leave S. officinale uncropped in the meadows wL!L eTer 

 grows, and I have found horses and pigs to eat S as* ** 

 rimum with great readiness. I have° never tried cow 

 with it. Of the productive powers of S. echinatum I 

 cannot as yet speak, my plants being only seedlings'of 

 1843, but it appears to promise a considerable bull. 

 W. P., Taunton. K, ~" 



Scutch.— I beg to inform you that scutch is the refuse 

 of the glue coppers, and consists of fatty matter with 

 lime and hair. It contains some fertilising properties 

 when used in compost heaps and decomposed, but it i« 

 used in very large quantities by the cheap sellers of ground 

 bones, who offer at lower prices than any respectable 

 dealer can grind them for. — Mark Fothergill. 



Yew. — I think it was Mr. Compton who stated such 

 startling facts about the Yew killing some horses when 

 eaten green, two or three Papers ago. I hope your 

 readers will give their experience upon this much-dis- 

 puted point. I have not the least doubt Mr. Compton 

 states what is a fact ; but it seems so completely to 

 oppose what I have always observed, that it quite puzzles 

 me. As soon as I read his note on the subject, I took a 

 friend to the Yews I mentioned about a month since and 

 there showed him a thick shrubby Yew, some 5 ft. or 6ft. 

 high, with a wall of 3 ft. high between it and the field ia 

 which cattle are kept. This tree is browsed quite close 

 and even as far as cattle can reach it over the wall. It is 

 so at all seasons, by any cattle or horses that may happen 

 to be in the field ; and moreover, the stock and sheep 

 have very frequently access to the churchyard in which 

 this and four other shrubby yews grow, constantly eat 

 them, and never have suffered in the least. I write this, 

 hoping that some of your readers will be able to throw 

 light upon this puzzle.— W. D. F. [Since this has been 

 in type we have received another letter on the subject 

 from our correspondent, who informs us that at Kingley 

 Bottom, near Chichester, there is a valley full of old 

 Yews. Perhaps some of our readers in that neighbour- 

 hood may be able to throw light on a question, the true 

 answer to which will have to reconcile such apparently 

 very contradictory evidence.] 



Diseases of Poultry. — I beg to send you an extract 

 on this subject from the lately published work, a Farm- 

 ing for Ladies," which I can recommend to poultry 

 fanciers : — " The common remedy for the pip or gape is 

 to peel off the membrane with the nails, and afterwards 

 rub the tongue with butter and honey. Upon dissection 

 after death, however, there have been found in the wind- 

 pipe several small red worms, varying in size : they can 

 be removed with safety and facility in the following man- 

 ner : — Let the operator take a small but firm feather 

 from a hen or pigeon, and strip it from the stem, ex- 

 cepting about an inch and ahalf from the tip end, according 

 to the size of the chicken, wetting it a little, except at 

 the extreme point." This is to be placed in the mouth 

 of the chicken, and as soon as it breathes, to be intro- 

 duced into the windpipe and pushed gently down and 

 turned round, '* by which means some of the worms will 

 adhere to the feather, and others will be so loosened 

 that the chicken will sneeze them up and throw them 

 from its mouth." — M.S. , 



Bone-dust.— There is now much said about reducing 

 bones as manure by acids, so that the whole of them 

 may be fit for immediate use, as is not otherwise the 

 case. It has occurred to me that they might be reduced 

 at much less expense by means of large Papin's digesters, 

 and much more expeditiously. If this was suggested to 

 the public by means of your Paper, perhaps some person 

 would be induced to make the experiment on a large 

 scale. I have been making trials of various manures on 

 my Grass-plots. I marked out with pegs a great many 

 divisions, each containing l\ superficial yards. Lpon 

 each division I placed 3 oz. in a state of solution in 

 water. The nitrates of soda and potash have produced 

 more Grass than any other manure. I collect in a tans 

 the dirty waters from my house, and water my Orass 

 ground with it. 



The effect this produced was 



Muriate of ammonia . 



Guano ..... 



A mixture of the whole (3oz.) 



Carbonate of ammonia 



Black water from a dunghill 



Common salt . . • 



Sulphate of magnesia . • • • ""Z Q t 



Very little or no effect was produced from <J°z. __ 

 each of the following salts, on H yard of^Grass lana. 



.-(this 



3d 

 4th 

 5th 

 6th 

 ;th 

 8th 

 9th 

 iota 



Superphosphate of lime 

 Carbonate of sod.a 

 Sulphate of lime 

 Dissolved bones in sulphuric 



acid, and, another lot in 



muriatic 



Muriate of lime 



Phosphate of maS nesl t ^Va8t 

 is the best among this last 



list) 

 Dissolved soap 

 Sulphate of soda 



not 



A. 



The soil on which these experiments were made is a poor 

 gravel. Perhaps several of the salts which l dia 

 answer on my land might do so elsewhere.— C* A* 



Lloyd, „,<,A(> 



Stall-feeding Cows.- Surely "X." must have man 

 some mistake in his statement " that after a time all w« 

 animals are found to have tubercles on the lungs. * ' 

 system of feeding would prevent tubercles on the siung r 

 it is this, if judiciously practised " n - ■*- Wfi they 



warm in winter, ana cool in summer; aim " • — - * u 

 think all who, like myself, have any experience » " 

 feeding, will say the dairy-cows are far more neaitny 

 those who run in the fields in all weathers ; that w 



following interesting fact some years ago, bv a Rev Vph ^P erlmenta i farmer ' Mons. Vilmorisi, 30, Quai de la give quite as much or more milk, and that riche • , w 

 tleman, who had a large rookery near to the Rectorv" ,* e B lS8en, \ Pan j> as superior m merit to S. asperrimum, they are in much better condition ; and finally, tba 



6 ' e Kector y- 1 throw up their flower-stems earlier in the year than ?. economy in food, and the gain in good manure, Dot 



