Agricultural Chemistry. 
465 
Baron Liebig in the very next page, when the object is to refute 
our statements, and not to claim the truth as his own, says : — 
" It is not easy to unclerstand how Mr. Lawes could deduce from Lis results 
the conclusion, ' that nitrogcniscd manures are j)eculiarly adujAed for the 
culture of wheat,^ . . . . " ! 
Now, it so happens, that in " the passages above quoted," 
not one word was said of such plants as have not many leaves 
— " for example, of wheat." The reference was to annuals 
generally ; and runs thus — " The food contained in the atmos- 
phere does not suffice to enable these plants to obtain their 
maximum of size in the short period of their life." These 
plants, the annuals, include of course equally " cerealia and the 
leguminous plants which we cultivate,^' of which Baron Liebig 
has told us, that surely they " must derive their carbon and 
nitrogen from the same source whence the gramineae and legu- 
minous plants of the meadows obtain them." But notwith- 
standing that Baron Liebig has told us in so many forms in his 
j)revious works, that the nitrogen supplied by the atmosphere is 
sufficient for the purposes of agriculture, and also that the cereals 
and leguminous crops of our rotations are equally independent 
of nitrogen in the soil with the meadows, he now tells us that 
his meaning in those previous works was, that — for the growth of 
certain plants — " for example, of loheat " — the agriculturist must 
add ammonia in the manure ! The reader will judge for himself 
then, how far it is candid, or just, or strictly consistent with 
truth, that Baron Liebig should now seek to include by a state- 
ment of general principles, and by stretching and explaining the 
meaning of individual sentences of his previous works, facts and 
conclusions since established ; and which are not only funda- 
mental, as leading to the true explanation of the main features of 
agricultural practice, but which are further flatly contradicted by 
other individual sentences of his works, and are, by the con- 
current testimony of every competent writer on the subject, incon- 
sistent with the main, prominent, and most characteristic features, 
of his previously promulgated doctrines ? 
Another instance of this kind will come to light, in consi- 
dering Baron Liebig's comments on that part of our criticism 
of his views, which led to the attack on our experiments and 
conclusions in reference to the growth of turnips. In one of our 
papers we had said : — 
" But it is at any rate certain that phosphoric acid, though it forms so small 
a proi)ortion of the ash of the turnip, has a very striking etiect on its growth 
when applied as manure ; and it is equally certain that the extended cultiva- 
tion of root crops in Great Britain cannot be due to the deficiency of this 
substance for the growth of corn, and to the less dependence upon it of the 
root crops, as supposed by Baron Liebig." — Jour. Jloij. Agr. Hoc. Eng., vol. xii., 
part 1, p. 35. 
