45. 
MANURES AND MANURING. 
By A. N. Pearson. 
Under the title of “Orchard Manuring” a lecture was recently 
given at the Government Horticultural School, Burnley, by Mr. 
A. N. Pearson, the Government Agricultural Chemist. Although 
the lecture had reference mainly to the special requirements of 
orchardists, yet it dealt in so concise and comprehensive a manner 
with the whole question of manuring generally that it will 
doubtless be of use and interest to agriculturists of all sections. 
The following is the substance of the lecture :— 
All living things must feed. This is as true of plants as of 
animals. But upon what do plants feed? We might, perhaps, 
obtain an answer to this question if we were to find out what a 
plant is made of. If we take any piece of a plant—green grass, for 
instance, or the leaves of a tree, or a piece of wood, and heat it in | 
a dish or shovel over the fire, we see the first thing that happens 
is the escape of steam. This shows that the plant contains water. 
After having dried off all the water, if we heat the plant still 
further we find it catches fire and a large portion of it burns away. 
But we find it will not all burn away, there is a small portion 
left behind which we call ash. Thus, by this rough analysis, 
we find plants to be made up of three different kinds of matter— 
first, of matter dissipated on drying, which is mostly water; second, 
matter dissipated on burning ; and third, ash or matter not dissi- 
pated on burning. Of these three kinds of substance the first is 
far and away the greatest in quantity. On an average we may 
say that plants contain about 72 parts of water in 100; some 
plants, such as turnips and cabbages, may contain as much as 92 
parts in 100. Of the matter dissipated on burning we may say 
that there would be on an average about 26 parts in 100, and of 
the ash about 2 parts. 
Were we to adopt a finer method of analysis we could find out 
what the matter dissipated on burning was made of, and what the 
ash was made of. We should find that in the former there was 
carbon, which is the black stuff we see in charcoal ; nitrogen, 
which is the principal gas in the air we breathe ; and the elements 
