108 



On Seed-Steeping, 



quotations from the writings of some of the most ingenious men of 

 their times, as an introduction to my own experiments. 



The writings of many of the agriculturists of the seventeenth 

 century display a remarkable spirit of inquiry, associated with a 

 correctness of reasoning, hardly to be expected in such early days, 

 and almost free from the narrow-minded fear of innovation which 

 characterises many of the writers of the last century. In the writ- 

 ings of Plattes for example, there are suggestions which may be 

 studied with advantage even at the present day. The following 

 remarks on the steeping of seeds are from his " Discovery of hidden 

 Treasure," published in 1639, and follow some good observations 

 on liquid manure. " When the sun hath exhaled the greater part of 

 the dung-water, and that it groweth thickish and fat, then reserve 

 a good pit full thereof well bottomed with clay, that will hold 

 water, and at seed-time steep your seed-corn in it, but put the fat 

 water to it by little and little as it drinketh it up ; that at the last 

 it may be almost dry of itself: but before it be full dry, sift a small 

 quantity of lime amongst it, that so it may grow dry with the lime, 

 and grow like comfits, then with this seed sow or set your most 

 remote ground from your dunghills, and by this means you will 

 save ten times as much labour in carriage of your dung, so far as 

 this labour cometh too, and as for your crop, though you shall not 

 have so much increase as some, have mountebanklike reported of it, 

 yet you shall have a good material increase, for one crop only. 



" And I have sometimes spritted the corn a little, as they use to 

 do for malt, and then have sown it, and it came up speedily and got 

 the predomination of the weeds at first, and so kept the same, 

 whereby I had far greater increase than ordinary. Also I found 

 sometimes when a dry season came upon the sowing, that my corn 

 thus ordered took root far better than other mens' corn who would 

 not take this small pains to steep it and sprit it." 



About this period attention was drawn to seed-steeping by Lord 

 Bacon, who made a number of experiments on the subject, which 



