356 Swedes raised tipon barren Land with artificial Manure. 
proved so successful, to raise a crop of swedes upon land of cer- 
tainly most unpromising character. Although I cannot feel any 
confidence that the statement of my plan and its calculations will 
be deemed worthy of insertion in the pages of the Society's 
Journal, yet I venture to submit all the particulars, that the ex- 
periment may, in the event of its being published, be intelligible to 
all readers, even to those, if such there be, who have not yet given 
their attention to ' Chemistry in its Application to Agriculture.' 
The problem which I sought to solve is contained in the 
question — Can we by supplying to the soil the constituents (so 
far as at present known) of a plant, cultivate that plant on any 
land, however in itself sterile ? " 
The portion of ground chosen for the testing of the principle 
here implied was, as your Lordship will recollect, situated in the 
parish of Sutton Waldron, in Cranbourn Chase, very steep, ex- 
posed to the south, but sheltered in some degree by the hills of 
which it forms a part, almost covered with white rubble, forming 
a portion of the upper chalk." This precise spot, consisting of 
five acres, was selected because it appeared the most barren and 
" unlikely" of any in the immediate neighbourhood. In truth, 
the endeavour to grow swedes on such land appeared to all 
observers an expcrimentum crucis. So long as it lay in down, 
scarcely any herbage whatever covered this hill -side. On the 
failure of the hay- crop in 1844, a party of poor men from 
Shaftesbury came to me soliciting employment. They were set 
to dig this piece of land, but the soil proved too thin and stub- 
born for the spade ; they therefore, in their own phrase, knocked 
it over with the pickaxe. Twice in the season afterwards it was 
sown with rape, but the produce was nothing. A soil of this 
constitution seemed a fair field for the experiment on a pretty 
large scale and in a. popular way — I say "in a popular way," 
because, to satisfy the requirements of rigid science, a strict 
analysis both of the soil and manure would be asked for, before 
any inference would be permitted to be drawn from the result. 
Yet for practical purposes it may seem enough to show that, on 
land growing nothing, a large crop can be raised by adding cer- 
tain ingredients which the chemist tells us are necessary for the 
fruitful cultivation of that crop. Accordingly in the latter part of 
April, 1845, I determined on this hill, as above described, to see 
whether it were possible to produce a crop of swedes weighing 
20 tons per acre. To effect this object, chemical analysis, as 
given in Professor Johnston's Lectures, acquaints us that there 
would be required for the bulbs and tops of such a return {i. 
for 20 tons of bulbs and tons of tops) inorganic matter weigh- 
ing more than 500 lbs. ; consisting of about 14G lbs. of potash, 
70 lbs. of soda, 69 lbs. of sulphuric acid, 30 lbs. of phosphoric 
acid, 103 lbs. of lime, 22 lbs. of magnesia, 23 lbs. of chlorine. 
