STATISTICS OF WHEAT CULTURE. 



239 



There is no crop, the skilful and successful cultivation of which on the same 

 soil, from generation to generation, requires more art than is demanded to pro- 

 duce good wheat. To grow this grain on fresh land, adapted to the peculiar 

 habits and wants of the plant is an easy task. But such fields, except in rare 

 instances, fail sooner or later to produce sound and healthy plants, which are 

 little liable to attacks from the malady called " rust," or which give lengthened 

 ears or " heads," well filled with plump seeds. 



Having long reside.l in the best wheat-growing district in the Union, the 

 writer has devoted years of study and observation to all the influences of soil, 

 climate, and constitutional peculiarities, which affect this bread-bearing plant. 

 It is far more liable to smut, rust, and shrink in some soils than in others. 

 This is true in western New York, and every other section where wheat has 

 long been cultivated. As the alkalies and other fertilizing elements become 

 exhausted in the virgin soils of America, its crops of wheat not only become 

 smaller on an average, but the plants fail in constitutional vigor, and are more 

 liable to diseases and attacks from parasites and destructive insects. Defects 

 in soil and improper nutrition lead to these disastrous results. Soils are de- 

 fective in the following particulars : 



1. They lack soluble silica, or flint in an available form, with which to pro- 

 duce a hard glassy stem that will be little subject to " rust." Soluble flint is 

 never very abundant in cultivated soils ; and after they have been tilled some 

 years, the supply is deficient in quantity. It is not very difficult to learn with 

 considerable accuracy the amount of silica which rain-water as it falls on the 

 earth will dissolve out of 1,000 grains of soil in the course of eight or ten days. 

 Hot water will dissolve more than cold ; and water charged with carbonic acid 

 more than pure water which has been boiled. The experiments of Prof. 

 Rogers of the University of Virginia, as published in Silliman's Journal, have 

 a direct bearing on this subject. The researches of Prof. Emmons of Albany, 

 in his elaborate and valuable work on " Agriculture," as a part of the Natural 

 History of New York, show that 10,000 parts of soil yield only from one to 

 three parts of soluble silica. The analyses of Dr Jackson, as published in his 

 Geological Survey of New Hampshire, give similar results. Earth taken from 

 an old and badly exhausted field in Georgia, gave the writer only one part of 

 soluble flint in 100,000. 



"What elements of crops rain water, at summer heat, will dissolve out of ten 

 or twenty pounds of soil, in the course of three months, is a point in agricul- 

 tural science which should be made the subject of numerous and rigid experi- 

 ments. In this way, the capabilities of ditferent soils and their adaptation to 

 difi"erent crops may be tested, in connection with practical experiments in field 

 culture, on the same kind of earth. 



Few wheat-growers are aware how much dissolved flint an acre of good 

 wheat demands to prevent its having coarse, soft, and spongy stems, which are 

 anything but a healthy organization of the plant. In the Journal of the 

 Royal Agricultural Society of England, vol. 7, there is an extended "Report on 

 the Analysis of the Ashes of Plants, by Thomas Way, Professor of Chemistry 

 at the Royal Agricultural College, Cirencester," which gives the result of sixty- 

 two analyses of the ash of wheat, from as many samples of that grain, mostly 

 grown on different soils and under difterent circumstances. 



In this report are given the quantity of wheat per acre, the weight of straw 

 cut close to the ground to the acre, and also that of the chaff. These researches 

 show, that from ninety-three to one hundred and fifty pounds of soluble flint 

 are_ required to form an acre of wheat ; and I will add from my own investi- 

 gations, that three-fourths of this silica is demanded by nature during the last 

 sixty days preceding the maturing of the crop. This is the period in which 

 the stem acquires its solidity and strength, and most of its incombustible earthy 

 matter. The quantity of this varies from three to fifteen per cent, of the 

 weight of the straw. Prof. Johnston and Sir Humphry Davy give instances 

 in which more than fifteen per cent, of ash was found ; and Prof. Way gives 

 cases where less than three per cent, were obtained. The mean of forty sam- 

 ples was four and a half per cent. Dr. Sprengel gives three and a half as the 

 mean of his analyses. M. Boussingault found an average of seven per cent. 

 As flint is truly the hone of all the grass family, imparting to them strength, 



