548 



THE AGRICULTURAL GAZETTE. 



and phosphoric acids. Experience has confirmed this. 

 If 1000 lbs. of fresh Beech ashes are brought on the 

 Magdeburg acre of land, the soil will receive thereby 

 250 lbs. lime, 50 lbs. magnesia, 221 lbs. potash, 33 lbs. 

 soda, 76 lbs. sulphuric acid, 56 lbs. phosphoric acid, and 

 18 lbs. chlorine, whence it will be seen that several crops 

 will be thus provided with these mineral substances. It 

 is equally obvious that an equal quantity of Pine ashes 

 ^vill produce a less effect, because if the acre is manured 

 with 1000 lbs., this will amount only to 21 lbs. potash, 

 22 lbs. sulphuric acid, and 27 lbs. phosphoric acid. And 

 although the amount of lime is nearly the same in Beech 

 and Pine ashes, still potash and the sulphuric and phos- 

 phoric acids are the most important ingredients of fresh 

 ashes. The ashes of Pine act, it is true, also in respect 

 of its carbonate of lime decomposing the organic matter 

 in the soil, but the same is done by the carbonate of 

 lime of Beech ashes, which effect is there increased by 

 the greater amount of carbonate of potash ; the more so, 

 as potash is a stronger basis than lime. 



SUGGESTIONS RESPECTING TURNPIKE 



TOLLS. 



When I first heard of the appointment, by Her Ma- 

 jesty, of Special Commissioners to inquire into the 

 grievances of South Wales, the origin of which griev- 

 ances, and the subsequent insurrectionary actions of the 

 Rebeccaites, was the unreasonable number of turnpike 

 gates, erected by various turnpike trusts, and the con- 

 sequent exorbitant demand for tolls, it immediately oc- 

 curred to me that a plan of a less objectionable character 

 might be devised for raising money to keep the turnpike 

 roads in proper repair; I have subsequently reflected 

 much upon the subject, knowing that the grievance was 

 not confined to South Wales alone, but extended over 

 the major part of the kingdom. I anticipated a general 

 measure would have been resorted to, but finding a Bill 

 brought before Parliament, only embracing South Wales, 

 I venture, without entering into matters of detail, to 

 publish a brief statement of a scheme, which I forwarded 

 to them on the 1st January last. 



In the first place I would suggest that all toll-gates 

 should be removed, with the exception of those in the 

 immediate vicinity of towns, where they may be allowed 

 to remain, together with the attached houses, and made 

 available as ticket stations. These premises would be 

 eligible residences for Police officers and their families, 

 who could thereby officiate in a double capacity ; by at- 

 tending to their constabulary duties, and also by giving 

 tickets to, or receiving tickets from, travellers, according 

 to circumstances. 

 ^ Secondly. — All persons travelling by horse, gig, car- 

 riage, &c, and the proprietors of mail or stage-coaches, 

 waggons, vans, &c. to take out an annual licence accord- 

 ing to mileage or other specific arrangemeut. But all 

 horses, carts, waggons, &c, used for purposes of hus- 

 bandry, or carrying lime, guano, or any other kind of 

 manure to and from farms, (except for hire,) and also 

 for carrying agricultural produce to market, to be totally 

 exempt. Districts to be formed under the special direc- 

 tion of Government ; in these it would be necessary to 

 station efficient officers for receiving, quarterly, the 

 moneys paid for the various descriptions of licences ; 

 which moneys are to be disposed of in the following 

 manner : viz. — to pay the creditors of the turnpike 

 trusts interest upon their various secured sums at the 

 rate of 4 per cent, (or the whole debt may be funded by 

 Government at 3 per cent.), and the surplus to be divided 

 pro rata £ per mile, for keeping mail and coach roads 

 in repair ; and £ per mile for other turnpike roads. 



Thirdly. The present Turnpike Commissioners to be 

 Local Commissioners, under whose superintendence the 

 mileage allowance is to be expended. 



Fourthly. Highways to be kept in repair by the occu- 

 piers of houses and lands within the respective town- 

 ships, hamlets, or districts in which such roads are 

 situate ; land owners to contribute of the sum 



required for general improvements. 



Fifthly. Vested interests in toll-gates to be protected ; 

 and, if possible, purchased. 



Those persons, therefore, who make use of private 

 carriages or horses, such as commercial travellers, &c, 

 must take out an annual licence for that purpose, and the 

 owner or owners of every coach, waggon, van, or other 

 carriage used for hire or profit, with the exception afore- 

 said, must take out an annual licence regulated accord- 

 ing to the average number of miles travelled during the 

 three preceding years. From a calculation made in 

 accordance with the foregoing suggestions, I have de- 

 duced the following result : viz That after paying 4 per 



cent, upon the suras secured to the creditors of the 

 turnpike trusts, reserving annually a large amount for 

 a sinking fund, and an adequate sum for surveyors, as 

 also to meet incidental expenses, there will be a suffi- 

 ciency for keeping the turnpike roads in repair through- 

 out England and Wales. Were the above circumstances 

 taken into senous consideration, no one, I believe, would 

 entertain a doubt of the superiority of the scheme over 

 that at present in force; that is to say, receiving tolls 

 once in about every five miles. It will also be admitted, 

 I apprehend, that persons contributing to the mainte- 

 nance of turnpike roads will not have to pay nearly so 

 much as under the present system; and likewise the 

 charges for repairs of gates, toll-houses, law charges 

 clerks' salaries, and other expenses will be saved ; at the 

 same time affording just protection and encouragement 

 to the agriculturist. — Morris Sayce, Kin. ton. 



Home Correspondence. 



Saving Corn in Damp Weather — In the laboratory 

 we are in the practice of drying materials which do not 



bear heat, by aid of substances having strong attraction 

 for moisture ; one of which, lime, being largely used in 

 manure, might be employed for drying the Corn, at no 

 other cost than the labour. If the rick be made hollow, 

 with the grain turned inward, a sufficient quantity of 

 fresh quicklime placed within, and then all placed in 

 from bottom to top, and covered over to exclude the 

 external air, the lime will rapidly dry the air within, 

 which will as rapidly draw moisture from the Corn, and 

 so continue until the Corn is dry, or the lime saturated. 

 And as quicklime will absorb about one-third its weight 

 of water, a ton of lime will take between 6 and 7 cwt. of 

 water, and thus probably dry 6 or 7 tons of Corn and 

 Straw ; for all this water must come from the Corn, 

 if the external air is well excluded, and the lime raised 

 from the soil by a bed of stones, gravel, or Straw. The 

 lime must not, of course, touch the Corn, and therefore 

 room should be left for it to swell in slacking. If there 

 be no practical impediment to this method, the farmer 

 may be enabled to save his Corn in the most capricious 

 seasons, without the mortification of seeing it sprouting 

 in the ear, as it stands or lies on the ground. It must 

 be received only as a suggestion, having never, to my 

 knowledge, been tried on the large scale ; but its success 

 in the laboratory gives reason to hope for its efficacy in 

 the field. — J. Prideaux. 



Folding of Sheep, §c. — For the sake of giving ad- 

 ditional employment to the surplus labour of my parish, 

 I broke up last winter an old sheep-walk on the upper 

 chalk. As I have laid out 1000/. in buildings on 150 

 acres, I am anxious to follow the most approved principle 

 of cultivation, and particularly desire the assistance of a 

 practical and scientific agriculturist to determine the best 

 manner of consuming 80 acres of Turnips, which are 

 now, despite of the dry season, full of promise. On my 

 clay farm I consume all my Turnips, Mangold Wurzel, 

 &c, in yards sheltered with sheds for the cattle and 

 sheep. I follow this practice, from the very obvious 

 reason that in wet weather it is impossible on heavy clay 

 to consume the crops on the ground. But this impos- 

 sibility does not apply to the hill (chalk) farm. The 

 universal practice here is to fold the sheep on the Tur- 

 nips during the winter. It is plain that the exposure to 

 wintry weather must be very prejudicial to the sheep in 

 respect of their fattening ; but then it is maintained by 

 the old school here, that the advantage of the treading 

 of the sheep, and equal distribution of the dung and urine 

 on the land, cannot be compensated by any other means. 

 I beg, therefore, the help of your counsel on this point. 

 Would you on a light, i. e. chalk soil, cart your Turnips, 

 and consume them in the yard ; or would you rather 

 erect in each Turnip-field temporary shelter, such as is 

 described in an early Number of your Gazette $ It is 

 clear that one must set off the cost of carting the Turnips, 

 &c. to the yards, and then the manure back to the fields, 

 and the loss of an equal distribution of manure on the field 

 at the time, against the gain which the sheep will make by 

 shelter in wintry weather. This seems to be an im- 

 portant subject of deliberation, applicable to all soils 

 where the treading of the sheep would not be injurious. — 

 A. Huxtable. [It is very hazardous work, acting directly 

 in opposition to the experience of a whole district. We 

 have no experience of a chalk soil, but we cannot be far 

 wrong in advising you not to dispense with the treading of 

 your land by sheep, which the farmers on chalk soils say is 

 essential, unless you substitute something of a similar 

 kind, such as the use of Crosskill's Clod-crusher, on 

 your Wheats, which will enable you to adopt the econo- 

 mical plan (as our experience justifies us in calling it) of 

 feeding your Turnips in sheds. Your safest plan is to 

 draw only a portion of your Turnips at first, and feed 

 them in sheds. The experience of a year will indicate 

 the proper course in future.] 



Carts or Waggons for Harvest Purposes.— In refer- 

 ence to a late Leading Article on "Carts versus Waggons/' 

 I can say irom the experience of the two past and pre- 

 sent seasons, that carts for harvest work, i. e. Hannam's 

 harvest carts, are far superior to waggons ; I will enume- 

 rate some of their advantages :— 1. The cost is much less: 

 my carts cost me 15/. each— they are well made. 2. They 

 answer better than Scotch carts with wings attached for 

 harvest work. Having one of mine fitted with wings, (I 

 use Scotch or Cumberland dung carts, similar to those in 

 common use, except that I have an improved wav of 

 t'Pping), I can speak from experience on this subject. 

 1 had three of them carrying Hay from a field about 200 

 yards from my homestead, where the rick was building, 

 and having through curiosity, noted the time it occupied 

 to load and send them home, I found one passed my 

 window every fifteen minutes, i. e. four in an hour ; they 

 were good loads well tied on and raked down-one man 

 was pitching and one loading. As to their merits in 

 working against waggons, I was last harvest employed in 

 carting some heavy Oats from a field U mile from the 

 homestead where the rick was building, and I borrowed 

 two waggons of my neighbour, which, with three harvest 

 car s of my own .made : m all five carts and waggons. I went 

 to the field and timed the men, to satisfy myself which took 

 the longest time to load-the carts or waggons, (this I 

 did unknown to the men, and it should also be remembered 

 that my men had a prejudice against the use of single 

 horse-carts, especially for harvest work, having been 

 always used to waggons), and I found the carts occupied 

 one-hfth less time Jdading than the waggons, each carry- 

 ing the same load. 1 can give you another instance —My 

 neighbour, who all along had laughed at my doing all 

 my work with carts, was one day busy Wheat-sowing, 

 and beginning, as I suppose, to think of economising his 

 horse-labour, came to me to borrow my harvest carts • I 

 lent them of course ; the next day on asking him how he 



[Aug. io, 



got on, he told me that he had doneas^u^h^rFTT 

 had carted as many Beans with my three harvest 'caru 

 and three horses as he had done the day before with 

 three waggons and seven horses ; others may think thi< 

 strange, I do not. Let us see what the horses had to do 

 Three harvest carts will weigh rather more than 21 cwt* 

 i. e. 7 cwt. each. One waggon weighs about 21 cwt.— as 

 much as three carts ; the Beans were on wet land 

 ploughed into 8-feet ridges, with deep furrows; therefore 

 the hind and fore wheels of the waggon must have been 

 each in the bottom of a furrow or nearly so, in crossing 

 the lands, and it would require a greater force to pull 

 four wheels over two ridges than a cart over one with 

 equal loads, for the waggon must be crossing two ridges 

 at once. Then there is time saved in turning carts* one 

 horse also moves much quicker than three c:*n be moved 

 together. Let a man once try them, and I think he 

 would scarcely be induced to go back to waggons a^ain 

 on any consideration. — /. E. ° ' 



Liquid Manure. — For several months past many of 

 your correspondents have dwelt voluminously on this 

 subject : in fact, so much so, that it has become the 

 engrossing theme of your Paper ; and it is right that its 

 merits should be discussed and made known ; but it is 

 too absurd to imagine that such wonderful results are to 

 follow the application of liquid manure to land, as some 

 of your able writers have described. I have a large cis- 

 tern, a pump, and a liquid manure cart — all that is need- 

 ful for going to work on a large scale. I have tried it 

 on Grass lands, fallow for Potatoes, Wheat and Beans. 

 I have applied gypsum with the same at the rate of from 

 two to three cwt. per acre, but I have not yet perceived 

 any very wonderful or astonishing results, although I 

 have used it in wet weather, in dry weather, in spring, 

 summer, autumn, and winter. It has proved useful, and 

 done some good, and I do not wish to discourage the 

 purchasing of pumps, carts, the sinking of wells, &c, 

 &c. ; only I would recommend that some of our most 

 sanguine liquid manure men would be a little more 

 moderate in their praises until evident results have been 

 witnessed. It is my humble opinion that it would be 

 far better, and more economical, to put burnt soil, turf, 

 or road-scrapings, a foot thick, at the bottom of our farm 

 yards, early in the autumn, to absorb the same, than to 

 be at the expense and trouble of conveying it in carts 

 from the cistern. It requires two horses to convey two 

 hogsheads to the land when the ground is at all wet, and 

 especially should the distance be far, it is a very serious 

 expense. It is my invariable custom to put my store 

 sheep into yards during the winter months. Last winter 

 I had the bottom of one of the sheep yards covered 

 with soil. It absorbed the moisture, kept the yard dry, 

 and my sheep were remarkably healthy, free from foot- 

 rot, and never wintered better. In turning the soil up 

 with the manure in the spring, I found it thoroughly 

 impregnated with the urine from the sheep. I should 

 imagine that one cart-load of the said soil contained a 

 very great quantity of the very best liquid manure. 

 The expense of conveying it to the land has been consi- 

 derably less than taking it from the cistern ; besides I 

 had an opportunity of putting the whole on my Turnip 

 land at a seasonable time, whereas I could not have 

 saved it in my cistern for the same purpose, as no place 

 would have been large enough to have contained it. 

 With all due deference to the opinions of the tank men, 

 I would advise a trial of this plan previously to making 

 cisterns, purchasing pumps, carts, &c, as I am of opi- 

 nion it is the best way of securing the liquid manure, 

 and by far the least expensive in conveying it to the 

 land. In conclusion, I would beg my brother farmers 

 to well digest the sage advice given by the noble Presi- 

 dent of the Royal Agricultural Society, at the late din- 

 ner at Southampton: — "Try cautiously those things 

 which are likely to succeed, and do not expend large sums 

 of money in things which you do not know whether 

 they will succeed or not. If you find your experiments 

 succeed, then go into the matter gallantly and well. 

 So say 1.— Henry Hudson, jun., Wick, near Pershore, 



Worcestershire. 



Proper time io harvest Wheat.— \ have to suggest, 

 for the consideration of some of your correspondents— 

 from whom 1 hope to hear through you upon the subject 

 —the following considerations with reference to the 

 ripening of grain crops. If a plant of ^." ea f be 

 examined some two or three weeks before ripe, it will be 

 found that the lowest joint, or perhaps the two lowest 

 joints, are already yellow, ripe, and dead. The upper 

 part of the straw— the ear and grain— are, however, still 

 green and juicy. Now what I have to suggest is, that as 

 the only connexion between the plant and the ground is 

 useless for the conveyance of nourishment, and as the 

 leaves, the only connexion between the plant and the air, 

 may also by that time be considered as nearly useless and 

 dead, the plant— straw and grain— must contain then all 

 the nourishing material which it ever can acquire, however 

 long it may be allowed to stand, to whatever stage in the 

 process of ripening it may be allowed to reach before it is 

 cut down. If this be so, the inference naturally follows 

 that grain may be cut greener than is the general practice. 

 And possibly in late districts, when the grain has been cut 

 altogether green, the increased value of the crop (Oats for 

 instance) as fodder, from this circumstance, may partly 

 compensate for the loss which the farmer has sustained 

 in losing a crop of grain. — M. S. , 



Sleeping of Seeds.— I shall be happy to communicate 

 the results of my experience in steeping seeds, when the 

 proper time arrives for doing so, in the hope that I sn 

 receive more valuable information in return. Io 

 meantime I may safely state what may no* be held 

 fact. The Corn steeped is taller than Corn not steepea, 





