874 
Fcrnning ivitJiout Live-stock. 
mineral form, and therefore very soluble. According to Wagner's 
researches, a hectare of white mustard is capable, in the space of 
some weeks, of combining in its organic matter the nitrogen of 800 
kilogrammes of nitrate of soda. 
From what has been said, and in view of the experiments of 
M. Arndt, the conclusion is drawn that the system of sideration 
employed by Schultz of Lupitz upon light soils is equally applicable 
to heavy soils. All kinds of soils, particularly such as have been 
but little favoured by nature, are capable of being rendered of 
enhanced value by the aid of green manures. 
From an economic point of view it is, however, necessary to 
take into consideration the facilities for marketing farm produce. 
By reducing the live stock, the volume of the products which have 
to be conveyed to market is necessarily enlarged. The application 
of sideration must, therefore, to some extent depend upon the 
density of population in the country, and upon the proximity of 
towns, and of railways or canals. 
In the foregoing translation of a communication (" Farms 
without Live-stock in Germany "), which appears in the Bulletin (No. 
5, 1891) of the French Ministry of Agriculture, I have followed the 
author pretty closely. The reader will have gleaned in the course 
of the article that the process of sideration is involved in our familiar 
practice of green manuring, when leguminous crops are employed 
for the latter purpose. The word " sideration " (Lat. sidus, a 
star) is presumably intended to convey the idea that tlie plants 
concerned obtain their nitrogen from outside the solid part of the 
earth — from, in fact, the atmosphere which envelopes it. 
All the nitrogen-storing plants that have been named are, it will 
have been observed, leguminous species. Only the kidney vetch 
and " trifolium " (Tri/olium incarnatum, L.) are natives of Britain, 
but the other species named are all capable of cultivation m this 
country. 
Not only, however, are these plants all leguminous species, but 
they belong exclusively to one group of the Leguminos?e. Botanist* 
have separated the plants of the great natural order Leguminosse 
into three divisions, called respectively the Papilionaceje, the 
CVsalpiniew, and the ]Mimose?e. All British leguminous species, 
and all the leguminous plants mentioned in this paper, are msmbers 
of the division Papilionacea?. Consequently, in this country, the 
term leguminous is practically equivalent to papilionaceous. The 
locust-bean is an example of the Ca^salpiniere, and the " sensitive 
plant " of the Mimosese. 
Sideration suggests another development of the many-sided 
nitrogen question. 
W. Fream. 
