British Farmer^ s Magazine. ' 531 



heart-shaped, bright red on one side, and of a golden yellow on the other. 

 " Its hardiness and productiveness, whether upon a standard or against a 

 wall, are ascertained." Ripe with the May Duke in the beginning of July. 

 Trees strong and healthy, wood dark brown, shoots rather drooping, and 

 leaves large and doubly serrated. 



Flemings British Fanner''s Hagazine, exclusively devoted to Agriculture 

 and Rural AiFairs. In 8vo Numbers, quarterly. 4s. 



No. XL for May. 



A paper in this number, by Mr. Ayton of Hamilton, entitled " Instances 

 pointed out of false Philosophy imposed on Farmers by Men of Science, 

 deserves notice." To attempt to detect and refute all the errors that have 

 been gone into, either by voluntary writers, or those who have been selected 

 by public bodies to draw up statistical accounts of districts or surveys of 

 counties, Mr. Ayton observes, would be an endless, and, in some measure, 

 an unnecessary task. " But where men, who are justly esteemed eminent 

 in other branches of science, and are looked up to as men of superior 

 abilities and profound erudition, who have been employed to deliver 

 lectures before the Board of Agriculture, have either put forth errors of 

 their own, or retailed those of others, as sound and correct data for the 

 guidance of farmers in an important part of their profession, and when 

 such errors are published and extensively circulated under the sanction of 

 high names, the detection of such errors becomes the more necessary. 



" The Board of Agriculture employed Sir Humphrey Davy to deliver 

 lectures on agricultural chemistry, and others to explain the mechanic 

 powers; but owing to Sir Humphrey and the others employed having been, 

 in a great measure, strangers to practical husbandry, they formed their 

 opinions on that art from their own particular branches of science, and fell 

 into many errors. Mr. Nasmith," author of Elements of Agrictdture 

 and other works, " having, as he thought, acquired some knowledge of 

 chemistry, and wishing to turn it to good account, procured about half a 

 bushel of moss earth, on which he experimented in floivei'-pots in his cotv- 

 house, and then detailed the results, or corollaries as he termed them, to the 

 Highland Society, as data for the practical cultivation of all the mosses in 

 Scotland ; and he was much offended at those who could not trust to his 

 prattling conceits, or who sought different results by cultivating that earth 

 on the broader scale of acres and fields, not in a byre, but where Nature 

 had laid it down. 



" Sir Humphrey Davy, the first chemist in Britain, but wtio seems to 

 know little about practical husbandry, has evidently gone into a similar 

 error as Mr. Nasmith, by applying his chemical experiments to agricultural 

 purposes, without perceiving that the one operation was altogether dif- 

 ferent from the other." 



Sir Humphrey said that the mode by which he and Mr. Sinclair deter- 

 mined the nutritive powers of the pasture and hay grasses, " by the 

 quantity of matter they contain soluble in water," is sufficiently accurate 

 for all the purposes of agricultural investigation. Mr. Ayton will not ad- 

 mit this, because the analysis described seems to him to be "so entirely 

 different from the much more complete processes of Nature, by which food 

 is converted into nutriment in the stomachs and intestines of animals." 

 The author, after describing the process of the stomach in extracting 

 nourishment from food, and objecting in detail to various results of the 

 experiments of Sir Humphrey and Mr. Sinclair thus concludes: " I cannot 

 view the solutions or extracts these gentlemen say they procured by mash- 

 ing or boiling dried grasses, as containing the whole nutritive matter in the 

 plants they subjected to that process; and as to the analysis of the dung, it 

 appears to me a mere freak. I am disposed to beheve that a considerable 

 portion of nutritive matter remained in the plants or hay after the scalding 



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