The Food of our Agricultural Crops: 
69 
good of all animals, young and old. A fat lamb contains only 
28£ per cent, of dry fat, a fat sheep 35^ per cent. ; and as to 
pigs, young ones, killed as porkers, lay on much less fat than 
bacon hogs. Those persons, therefore, who have no great pre- 
dilection for fat should eat their meat at an age when it con- 
tains the least of it — that is, when young. 
I hope the details given in this article will be found sufficient 
for the general guidance of those who may seek in it for some 
useful hints derived from practical observation and experience : 
the science of my subjeot I must leave in other hands. 
Henry Eyebshed. 
THE FOOD OF OUR AGRICULTURAL 
CROPS. 
If a person were asked what events had produced the greatest 
influence upon agriculture in Great Britain during the last 
half-century, he would, undoubtedly, say the establishment of the 
Royal Agricultural Society of England, and the publication of 
Baron Liebig's work upon agricultural chemistry. It is some- 
what remarkable that these two events took place almost con- 
temporaneously, the Royal Agricultural Society having been 
founded in 1838, and Baron Liebig's work published in 1840. 
The first number of the Journal of the Society, which was 
issued in April 1839, contains an article " Upon the Present 
State of Agriculture as a Science in England," by the late Philip 
Pusey ; and we may feel tolerably sure that this acute observer 
knew everything that was to be known in England on this sub- 
ject. In speaking of bones as a manure, he says that farmers 
complain of the bones supplied to them having been previously 
boiled, and, consequently, that they have been fraudulently 
deprived of the oil they contained; with regard to which, Mr. 
Pusey suggests, with his usual sagacity, that the manuring 
properties of the bones are probably increased rather than 
diminished by the loss of the oil. Neither in Mr. Pusey's 
article, nor in an article by the Rev. W. L. Rham, " On the 
Analysis of Soils," published in the same Journal, and for which 
the author was awarded a prize of 201., do the terms phosphate, 
potash, nitrogen, ammonia, or nitric acid occur. These and a 
great number of similar terms which represent substances of 
the highest importance to agriculture, and which, to the farmers 
