By Edward Solly, Esq. 



201 



On reading over the opinions of those who stated that they had 

 tried the process of seed-steeping, it will be observed that they are 

 for the most part unfavourable, though generally qualified by a 

 modest doubt of the accuracy of their conclusions, and the de- 

 cisiveness of their experiments. This is illustrated in the observa- 

 tions of Blith, and also in the following remarks of Sir Hugh Plat 

 (1653). " Now a word or two of those conceited practices, which I 

 promised before. I have heard some studient practisers very con- 

 fidently affirm, that if you steep your corn in water, the space of 

 certain hours (but I could never yet find them all agree in one 

 time; for some limit, twelve hours, some eighteen, and some 

 thirty-six hours, you may prove them all and keep the best) in 

 water, wherein good store of cow-dung hath lain in imbibition for 

 certain days, (which times you must also search, if you mean to be 

 an exact master) every day stirring the same once or twice together 

 before you lay in your corn, and after this preparation you sow the 

 same (though in barren ground) that so you shall purchase a most 

 rich and plentiful crop with an easy charge. But this kind of prac- 

 tice, I have heard both maintained and impugned as well by reason 

 as by experience, and that by men of good judgment on both sides, 

 although if I would set down my own experience herein, I must 

 needs confess I could never yet attain to any truth in this secret, 

 or to make any apparent difference between the corn that was 

 husbanded in this manner and that which grew of itself without 

 any such help (yet will I not for the credit of the reporters) alto- 

 gether discredit the invention, for that peradventure I might fail 

 in the nature of the grain or in the time of imbibition." 



He then proceeds to relate a successful experiment in which 

 corn was mixed with dung and water, the whole being well stirred 

 together for one hour; after standing some hours it was again 

 stirred for half an hour, and then left at rest all night. O 

 lowing morning the water was permitted to drain away, 

 and dung together then sown on very poor barren soil ; 



, and the corn 

 the crop 



