644' Catalogue of Works on Gardening, Sfc. 



Culture of the Grape Vine in Australia and New Zealand, with Remarks on the 

 Vineyards of Europe, Asia, Sfc. By George Sutton, F.L.S. 8vo. Lond. 

 1843. 



Elements of Practical Agriculture, comprehending the Cultivation of Plants, the 

 Husbandry of the Domestic Animals, and the Economy of the Farm. By 

 David Low, Esq., F.R.S.E., Professor of Agriculture in the University of 

 Edinburgh, &c. &c. London and Edinburgh, 1843. 8vo, pp. 817, and 

 numerous wood-cuts. 



In the present edition the author informs us he has " entered somewhat 

 more than in the previous ones into an explanation of what may be termed 

 principles." The soil, the external agents which influence it, and the nature 

 of those substances which, when added to it, increase its productive powers, 

 have been enlarged on. In various parts of the work it has been endeavoured 

 to show " the mistaken applications which may be made of principles to the 

 practice of the farm, and the errors into which persons little conversant with 

 practice are apt to fall, with respect to the kinds and degrees of knowledge 

 required to be possessed by the practical farmer." 



The author has evidently been roused by the attention recently paid to the 

 chemistry and geology of agriculture by the English Agricultural Society ; 

 and by the very remarkable fact, that the agriculturists of Scotland have 

 joined together, and agreed to give an eminent chemist 500/. a year for 

 analysing soils, besides an extra payment for each analysis. It would thus 

 appear that the practical men are taking the initiative of the professor. 



In the chapter on the Chemical Analysis of Soils, after enumerating the 

 various matters which enter into their composition, " soil being in fact one of 

 the most compound substances in nature," the following conclusion is arrived 

 at. " The farmer is able to determine the nature of his soil by its texture, its 

 depth, its productiveness of plants, and other sensible properties, and, happily, 

 the knowledge so attained is sufficient for all the ends of useful practice." 



" A knowledge of the intimate chemical constitution of the soil is highly 

 worthy of being obtained, and the subject would deserve to be pursued by 

 men of science, were there no other aim or result than the resolving of che- 

 mical and physiological questions. But too much must not be looked for 

 from such enquiries, as teaching the farmer new methods of practice. The 

 farmer knows, for the most part, better than the chemist, when a soil is good 

 or bad, when it is improvable by ordinary means, and when it is too barren to 

 repay the expenses of culture ; and he knows better than the chemist how to 

 keep it clean, dry, and as productive as the means at his command will allow, 

 with a due reference to return as compared with the expenditure. But this 

 latter knowledge is not derived from the laboratory, but the fields, and is a 

 branch of a practical business, in which chemistry can render little aid. What- 

 ever results chemical analyses of the soil may hereafter conduct us to, it must 

 be admitted, that as yet they have been interesting to the scientific enquirer 

 rather than useful to the farmer. Every garden and well-cultivated field 

 shows that the soil may be brought to its maximum of fertility without de- 

 pendence on any conclusions yet arrived at b}' the physiologist and the 

 chemist. Perhaps not more than a dozen of chemical analyses of soils have 

 yet been made in Europe, sufficientiy exact to aid the purposes of science, 

 while the great mass of those which are made, and communicated to farmers 

 as something necessary or useful to them, are equally worthless for science 

 and practice." (p. 23.) 



The chapter on the Geological Relations of Soils is entirely new, or at least 

 it is not in the second edition (the third we have not seen). After going 

 over the different formations, and shov.'ing that the soil of any tract may be 

 totally different from what the rocks on which it rests, or which abound in 

 its vicinity, might lead us to suppose, from the intermixture of soils or debris 

 of rocks brought from a distance by the action of water, the professor con- 

 cludes with the following paragraph : — 



