00.2 



THE AGRICULTURAL GAZETTE. 



[Sept. 8, 185 



•J. 



Highland Society and their indefatigable secretary | trade calculations false instead of uncertain, as at referred to in great 



present they are, will make so-called agricultural 



Mr. Hall Maxwell. 



It appears from the perusal of the evidence that 

 there are three plans proposed for the collection of 

 the information sought— that of the Board of Trade, 

 by which schedules placed in the hands of indi- 

 vidual occupiers are collected by parish or union 

 officers, and collated at a central Government office, 

 which is responsible merely for the arithmetical 



for the 



process of addition, and 

 cation of the result : that 



whom in his 



of 



correct publi- 

 Mr. Hall Max- 



of 



Secretary 

 like 



well, by whom in his capacity 

 to the Highland Society schedules are in 

 manner issued, received, and collated — he wielding, 

 however, something more than the influence which 

 Government posses>es, seeing that there has been a 

 long standing and inherited relationship existing 

 between Scottish farmers and their national Agri- 

 cultural Society uhich gives to the former confi- 

 dence in the requests and recommendations of the 

 latter, while it i^ives to the latter reasonable confi- 

 dence in the good faith and intelligence of the 

 former : and, lastly, there is the plan of Mr, Caird, 

 who would employ district officers having such 

 an extent of land under his supervision as he could 

 traverse in the three months before harvest, visiting 

 all the occupiers of it during that time, and 

 ascertaining from them the acreage of the several 

 crops. These inspectors would thus furnish the 

 acreage of the several crops before harvest, and 

 having access to parish maps and other sources 

 of information, they would be to a certain ex- 

 tent a check upon the inaccuracies of the returns 

 of the several occupiers. So far the result of 

 their labours would be the same as that furnished by 

 Mr. Hall Maxwell's correspondents ; but there 

 would be this special advantage in connection with 

 Mr. Caird 's plan, that a series of official reports of 

 the prospects of harvest would be obtainable 

 during the few months of summer from qualified 

 reporters scattered over the country at the rate of 

 about five to a county — reports which would furnish 

 the best information possible at a time when correct 

 fnformation on the food prospects of the country is 

 especially valuable. After harvest these reporters 

 would, on their own responsibility, return their 

 judgment of the crops with reference to that very 

 vague term which is called u the average of the 

 district," and we should learn the united opinion 

 of these officers as to the extent to which the 

 produce has exceeded or fallen below an average. 

 Mr. Hall Maxwell's reports of the harvest are the 

 opinions of committees not as to the relations of the 



but as to the actual yield per 

 acre — and we suppose that the estimate of a crop 

 formed by any one who has walked through it is 

 generally given in this form rather than in the other : 

 he concludes in the first place that it is so much 

 per acre, and then he perceives that it is so much 



Mr. 



crop to " an average," 



statistics more an evil than at present the absence 

 of them is. 



The effects of Climate on Fertility are but 

 little under our control. Such ability as we have 

 depends upon the influence of shelter and of drain- 

 age, together, let us add, with the adoption of such 

 means for supplying food as shall enable a plant 

 more rapidly to attain maturity, and so complete its 

 growth during the best season of the year, 

 have no power over the constitution of the plant 

 itself. The idea of acclimatation by the influence 

 of habit on the plant is founded in mistake. Our 

 highest authority on such subjects is perfectly clear 

 on this point : — " Nothing seems more perfectly 



made out," he says, u than that all plants demand 

 a particular climate — that is to say, a peculiar corn- 



detail in Mr. Parkes' well- 

 known paper in the fifth volume of the Journal, and 

 we will not dwell further on them. It must be 

 understood as one ascertained cause of the greater 

 fertility of a drained soil, that its higher temperature 

 has a most material influence on the abundance 

 and early maturity of its produce. 



Leaving then, the adaptation of the soil as regards 

 temperature to the constitution of the plants we culti- 

 vate, we come to its powers as a laboratory, store- 

 room, and machine for feeding plants. Perhaps 

 We even yet another exception must be made before we 

 can discuss this purely manufacturing treatment of 

 i the subject ; for independently of the power of 

 , soil to feed the plant, the relations of the former to 

 the latter when they are adapted to one another 

 may, to a certain extent, be asserted, just as its 

 climatic conditions are, as a mere ultimate fact, 

 originating in the habit, constitution, life, of the 



bination of temperature, moisture, light, and atmo- j plant itself, and so remaining without explanation- 

 spheric pressure, in order to arrive at perfection; rni «"---* ---■* « <*--* - -i^--.-i --j ^ 



and that all considerable disturbances of the pro- 



portion in which such combinations are naturally 

 provided are prejudicial or fatal to the health of 

 plants. A particular temperature of the soil is re- 

 quired for germination ; one seed will vegetate at 

 33°, and another requires 80°. A particular heat 

 is requisite to healthy growth ; the Almond will 

 expand its flowers at 40° ; the Horse-Chesnut 

 demands perhaps 60° : the temperature which is 

 favourable to the growth of one plant is prejudicial 

 to another, and fatal to a third. At 40° the Cabbage 

 thrives, the Kidney Beans and Cucumbers languish, 

 and the Sugar Cane dies."* We have to accept 

 these conditions of the life of the plants we culti- 

 vate as absolute and ultimate truths without expla- 

 nation and without remedy. But although we 

 cannot alter the character of a plant, we can to 

 some extent alter the circumstances under which 

 we cultivate it. " It is a great mistake," as Dr. 

 Lindley states, " to suppose that plants are affected 

 only by the temperature of the air ; they are perhaps 

 more affected by that of the soil in which their 

 roots are placed : and there can be no doubt that 

 crops can bear with less inconvenience a warm soil 

 and a cold air, than a cold soil and a warm air." 



Thus Wheat and Beans affect a stiff soil, and Barley 

 a light one ; Cabbage and Mangold Wurzel affect 

 adhesive loams, and the common Turnip a sandy soil, 

 apart, to some extent, from the powers of these 

 soils to supply their natural growth. This is, we 

 believe, to a certain extent, the case, but less so 



The case of Italian 



The 



It is at this point, then, that, so far as fertility 

 depends on climate, the power of the cultivator 

 is apparent. " With ordinary field crops a differ- 

 ence of a few degrees of the temperature of the 

 soil causes a most material difference in the 



According to 



above or below what is generally yielded. 

 Caird's inspectors will no doubt obtain and avail 

 themselves of the assistance of the farmers in 

 forming their own conclusions as to the probable 

 yield per acre, and so far their returns would 

 probably be as trustworthy as those of Mr. Max- 

 well's committees ; and after all, it matters very 

 little whether the gross produce of a district be 

 obtained by multiplying the acreage into the 

 surplus or deficiency per acre, and adding or sub- 

 tracting that from a total average yield previously 

 calculated, or by multiplying the acreage into the 

 directly estimated yield per acre of the district — 

 the latter is the simpler method, and proceeds 

 upon data that must be taken for granted in 

 the other case as well. The methods of determining 

 the acreage of the crop are the really important 

 features of the several plans ; and while we think 

 Mr. Maxwell's plan under the circumstances per- 

 sonal and national in which he and Scottish farmers 



there 



be 



are placed should be persevered in, mere can 

 little doubt that the method of paid and responsible 

 inspectors of districts, suggested by Mr. Caird, is 

 much superior to that which has been hitherto 

 pursued in England, by which the returns are 



the intervention of the Board 



obtained through 



of Guardians. There is a 



good deal of force 



in the objection of Mr. Maxwell to the employ- 

 ment of any machinery that would connect in 

 the mind of the farmer the returns he was asked 

 for with any possible use of them for the purposes 

 of taxation ; and, on the other hand, there 

 doubtedly great force in Mr. Cairo's 

 to all plans which have not within 

 operation of a test of 

 turns received. 



is un- 

 objection 

 them the 



casional, and 



the accuracy of the re- 

 Such a test, whether merely oc- 

 so to speak accidental, as in 

 Mr. Maxwell's plan, or systematic and inherent as 

 in Mr. Caird's, will ensure the greater trustworthi- 

 ness of the results of the inquiry as year by year it 

 is repeated ; the absence of any such test may 

 result in untrustworthy conclusions, which, making 



healthiness of vegetation or the fitness of the land 

 for the cultivation of a given species, 

 the experiments of Mr. Ferguson the mean tem- 

 perature of the soil near Edinburgh may be taken 

 to be 52° during the summer months. But if it 

 were to fall to 47° it is doubtful whether Wheat 

 would ripen well, or at all." As regards, then, 

 this important agent — temperature of soil — our 

 power of influencing it chiefly depends on drainage. 

 The warm showers of spring in well drained soils 

 at once penetrate and raise the temperature of the 

 mass, and seeds and shoots spring up with vigour. 

 That is one way in which drainage operates at the 

 most important season of the year. Its main in- 

 fluence, however, depends on the diminished evapo- 

 ration thus permitted from the surface of the land, 

 for the quantity of water which escapes by drainage 

 from a field is much larger than the quantity which 

 runs off the surface of an undrained field of similar 

 size adjoining it ; and the difference between either 

 and the rainfall is, of course, evaporated. The one 

 is a vessel open below, the other will hold water, 

 and both being exposed to rain and showers, with 

 intervals of fair weather, it is plain that all that 

 falls upon the latter must escape by evaporation, 

 except such portions as run over the edge when the 

 vessel is full ; and this evaporation reduces tem- 

 perature. In his paper on the Fens of Lincolnshire 

 Mr. Clarke says — u So great is the amount of heat 

 stolen from the soil in the process of evaporation 

 that it has been estimated every gallon of water 

 prevented from evaporating by being drained away, 

 adds as much to the temperature of the soil as six 

 gallons of boiling water poured into it." The 

 correcter way of putting it w T ould have been to say 

 that every gallon so evaporated abstracts as much 

 heat as would need so much boiling water to replace 

 it. " Evaporation removes from this district on an 

 average throughout the year about 45 gallons per 

 acre in an hour, which, however, is reduced to 18 

 gallons in the wet months ; if, therefore, water is 

 allowed to lie on a fen three days longer than it 

 could do, there are 1296 gallons more per acre 

 evaporated than there would otherwise be, and an 

 amount of heat lost from the soil equal to that con- 

 tained in 144 hogsheads of boiling water." But the 



than is generally imagined, 

 liye-grass may be taken as an illustration, 

 two farms in this country where it has been grown 

 most successfully are Willesdon, near London, and 

 Cunning Park, near Ayr — the one a stiff and 

 heavy clay, the other a light and almost blowing 

 sand. The former is the natural soil of the plant, 

 but the natural deficiencies of the latter have been 

 more than made up by the abundant artificial 

 supplies provided through it. 



Leaving then this reference to those requirements 

 of a plant which, as they have not been explained, 

 must be taken simply as natural distinctions in- 

 herent in its original character, we now come to 

 the soil considered as the food supply of vegeta- 

 tion : and its power to administer this food must be 

 first referred to. This is effected mainly by the 

 passage of water through it. Plants are unable to 

 range at will in search of food : they must have it 

 brought to them, and fertility depends upon the 

 certainty and facility with which this work is done* 

 It is not enough that the food is in the land, it 

 must be placed in solution before the rootlet 

 before it is of any use to the plant ; and so (1) the 

 water drill is coming into use — and (2) liquid 

 manuring, as carried on in Ayrshire, and at Tip- 

 tree and elsewhere, is found to increase so wonder- 

 fully the growth of Rye-grass, and (3) irrigation 

 similarly is so productive of early and abun- 

 dant growths of meadow grass, and (4) Mr. Wil- 

 kins finds his plan of liquid manuring underground 

 at enormous and indeed absurd expense tends to 

 such extraordinary fertility, and (5) land drainage 

 is evervwhere so useful. For this is one chief 

 source 

 The powers 



it has within it, or which is given to it, are 

 thus increased. Rain-water, valuable in itself as 

 containing food for plants, and valuable as a solvent 

 for its ability to reduce the solid particles of food 

 existing in the earth, so that they can find their 

 way into the plant, is thus enabled to pass through 

 the soil and by the roots of plants, which absorb it 

 as it passes them. Some portion of those differences 

 in fertility, attributable generally to differences in 

 the mineral structure of soils, is no doubt owing to 

 their varying powers in the mere administration ot 

 food to plants, and apart altogether from their 

 wealth as store-rooms of that food ; and so clay 

 soils are especially improvable by drainage. ^ Drain- 

 age is in fact the key by which access is made 



everywhere so useful. j*"or tnis is 



of the fertilising influence of drainage. 



of the soil to administer the food 



easy to the food for plants which soils contain. 



We come, therefore, now to consider a fertile 

 soil as a well filled store-room of food for plants. 

 It is here that chemical analysis has thrown so 

 muclf light upon our subject, and to some of «& 

 results we shall now refer. It is well in the 

 first place, however, to determine the ton"* 

 within which this source of information may 



assertions are more 

 likely to be true than its negative assertions, 

 after long experience the analyst asserts that any 

 substance & an essential element of a fertile sou, 

 he is more likely to be correct than if he shouia 

 venture to declare that some other substance is nw 



for his means of seeing and oi 



be trusted. 



source 

 Its affirmative 



greater coldness of wet soils and the advantage in 

 point of temperature which is gained by ensuring 

 the passage of air-warm water through the soil are 



* Dr. Lindley in the tl Cyclopedia of Agriculture." 



essential to fertility- — ~ , - 



judging, keen as they doubtless are, yet have tneu 

 limits. He can indeed determine the presence 

 of a mere "trace" of any substance present in WJ 

 glass before him, but a "trace" in the quantity tjw 

 he deals with is many cwts. per acre in the new * 

 and it may be considered pretty certain that tn 

 chemist cannot determine quantitatively l 

 presence of any substance in a soil of ordinary 

 I depth nearer than within a cart-load per acre. 



