506 Report of Experiments with different Manures 
■whole seven years of the experiments (1856-1862 inclusive). 
It is, of course, a matter of much interest to consider, not 
onlv the actual amounts of produce, or of increase, obtained from 
each of the differently manured plots, but also, whether the 
amouxits increase or diminish vear by vear as the experiments 
proceed. 
The duplicate unmanured plot, which was somewhat shaded 
from the afternoon sun, gave each vear rather more produce 
than the other. Takin? the mean of the two, the average 
annual yield of hay per acre, without manure, was, over the 
whole seven years, nearly 25J cwts., and over the last four 
years rather more than 26 cwts., showing that there is as yet 
no indication of progressive deterioration w here onlv the natural 
produce of the soil and season is taken from the land. Nor is 
there as yet e\-idence of material falling off in gross produce in any 
case where artificial mineral manures were employed, notwith- 
standing that none of those used supplied every mineral or inor- 
ganic * constituent taken off in the increased crop. The details 
* The terms " mineral " or " inorganic," as applied to the constituents of 
manures or crops, are, for convenience, employed throughout this paper to 
designate the incombustible or " ash constituents," they having been generally 
employed in this restricted sense by Liebig and most other writers on agricultural 
chemistry during the last twenty years or more. Yet, in his recent work Ein- 
leitnng in die Xaturgesetze des Feldbaues, p. 32 d seq.) Baron Liebig repudiates 
and ridicules such a classification as unscientific, claims ammonia and its salts 
as mineral manures, and accuses Mr. Lawes of setting up, in opposition to his 
own, a theory according to which mineral or inorganic manures should contain 
only incombustible or ash constituents. To support this allegation, he gives, in 
a separate paragraph, and in italics 'Sperrschrift), the following sentence as a 
quotation from Mr. Lawes's paper on ' Agricultural Chemistry,' vol. viii. p. 240, of 
this Journal : — 
''Manures are generally divided into two classes, organic and inorganic: 
organic manures are those which are capable of yielding to the plant, by decom- 
position or otherwise, carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen. Inorganic manures are 
those substances which contain the mineral ingredients of whidi the ash of plants 
is found to consist." — [Translation.] 
But the following is the passage as it really stands at the page referred to by 
Baron Liebig, and the portions given in capitals are those which are omitted by 
Baron Liebig in his professed quotation : — 
" I sow C03IE TO THE ACTIOS OF manures, which are generally divided into 
two classes — organic and inorganic. Althocgh this Disnscnos IS bt no 
IIEANS SATISFACrOBV, I SHALL ADOPT IT AS BEING GEXERALLT UNDERSTOOD. 
Organic manures are those which are capable of jnelding to the plant, by decom- 
position or otherwise, organic slatter— carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen 
— COSSTITITENTS WHICH CNCCLTIVATED PLANTS DERIVE OBICISALLT FROM THE 
ATMOSPHERE. Inorganic manures are those substances which contain the mineral 
ingredients, of which the ash of plants is found to consist." 
Here, then, in this which was Mr. Lawes's first paper, the classification which 
Baron Liebig accuses him of originating is only adopted as being already at that 
time " generally understood," and with a distinct protest that it is " by no means 
satisfactory. ' Yet, in order to fix the origination of the distinction upon Mr. 
I^wes, Baron Liebig joins together disconnected parts of a passage, and gives 
them, in a separate paragraph, in italics (SperrschrLft,. and between unbroken 
inverted commas, omitting (besides less material portions) an entire sentence 
