118 



Pure and improved Varieties of 



2nd. Culture; viz., preparation and quantity of seed ; time and 

 method of solving ; relation both as to preceding and following 

 crops, and as to varieties of soil. — The seed was washed, pickled^ 

 drained, and limed, as is usual on this farm ; then sown in drills 

 7 inches apart, about 3 bushels to the acre, on the 8th of January, 

 1838. When the seed is large, it is considered prudent to add 

 half a bushel or more to the acre. 



The field had borne potatoes the preceding year, and after two 

 ploughings to free it from any potatoes which might have been 

 left, it was dressed with 2 hogsheads of lime, 6 quarters of 

 lime ashes, and 5 quarters of kelp ashes, at a cost of 21. 5s. 6d. 

 per acre. This mixture of manures was with a view to afford the 

 wheat a different food from any it might have received, all of them 

 having a tendency to cause the corn to grain, and rather check the 

 overabundant growth of straw. Owing to the cold and frosty 

 season which followed, the wheat was 49 days in coming up ; it 

 was hoed in the middle of April, and again in May, which left the 

 land very clean, and the crop continued to look beautiful through- 

 out the season. 



It is worthy of remark, that a piece of the wheat was laid along 

 the centre of the field, over which a pipe of liquid manure had 

 been spread from a watering-cart the preceding season on potatoes, 

 just as they were appearing above ground. The crop of potatoes 

 not having absorbed the whole of the nutritive properties of the 

 liquid, the wheat grew taller, coarser, darker, and so abundant in 

 straw, that it afforded less grain, and that too of an inferior sample 

 to the corresponding strips on either side of it. The straw w^as 

 7 feet long in many places, and fully 6 feet over the whole field, 

 which consists of a soil derived from argillaceous schistus on a red 

 clay bottom. 



3rd. Hardihood and power to withstand severe tcinters. — I con- 

 sider this to be a very hardy wheat, affording much herbage and 

 straw, very fit for being eaten down by sheep in the spring, when 

 sown early in the fall. 



4th. Early maturity and severance of crop. — The Whiting- 

 ton" is rather a late wheat, ripening a week or ten days later than 

 the Jersey Dantzic, before described, though it was in bloom on 

 the same day, on the 2nd of July. It was chopped on the 24th 

 of August. 



5th. Tendency to degenerate, and liabilities to disease. — From 

 the purity of the seed, and the uniform appearance of the crop, it 

 does not appear likely to degenerate, nor does it seem more liable 



