Annual Report of the Consulting Chemist for 1881. 333 
per acre were grown on the plot upon which mineral superphos- 
phate (dissolved coprolites) had been applied in the preceding 
year to turnips. 
3. That the heaviest crop was raised on the land which in 
the preceding year had been manured with 20 tons of dung. 
The average produce per acre of the two dung-plots, it will be 
seen, amounted to 51 bushels of barley, weighing 52 lbs. per 
bushel, and 1 ton 13 cwts. 1 lb. of straw. 
4. That on the remaining plots the produce varied from 40 
to 43 bushels of corn per acre, and from 1 ton 5 cwts. to 1 ton 
8 cwts. of straw. 
The clover sown with the barley came up well, and there is a 
good plant all over the field. 
XIV. — Annual Report of the Consulting Chemist for 1881. 
The appended summary shows that during the twelve months 
beginning the 1st of December, 1880, to the 1st of December, 
1881, 1058 samples were sent to the Laboratory by members 
of the Royal Agricultural Society. 
Whilst fewer samples of superphosphates, bone-dust, compound 
artificial manures and feeding-cakes were received for examina- 
tion, applications for analyses of soils, and reports on their 
chemical and physical properties and the best means of raising 
their productiveness, have been more numerous than in the 
preceding year. Complete soil-analyses, if carefully performed, 
involve much expenditure of time and delicate analytical work, 
which, in addition to ordinary work, has occupied myself and 
assistants fully as much as in the preceding year, when over 
100 more of comparatively simple analyses of feeding-cakes 
were made than during the last twelve months. In most 
instances the soil-analyses were accompanied by lengthy reports 
on the manures most suitable to cereal or root-crops intended 
to be grown, the course of cropping suggested on particular 
soils, and generally the means of maintaining or increasing 
their fertility and productive powers. In the course of last 
year 60 such soil-reports were made for members of the Society, 
or 26 more than in the preceding year, which is a large and 
satisfactory increase over former years, and indicates a greater 
and more gratifying appreciation of reports, which some four or 
live years ago were but rarely demanded by English Agricul- 
turists. 
Inferior Artificial Manures sold under wrong names. — As usual, 
a number of inferior artificial manures and oilcakes passed 
