452 
Agricultural Maxima. 
by a first cutting in June, and immedielely after it 3 or 4 cwts. 
per acre of mixed Peruvian guano and sulphate of ammonia are 
sown upon it, and washed in by 100 tons of water per acre, poured 
upon it through the pipes, which water contains, moreover, 
such a share of the excrements of a byre of 48 cows as belongs 
to the period since the last pumping. In five weeks the land is 
again covered 3 feet high with a luxuriant growth of Italian rye- 
grass, weighing at least 16 to 20 tons per acre. This is cut and 
followed by another manuring in a similar manner, and a third cut 
of 16 to 18 tons maybe expected pretty early in September ; and 
a further manuring results in 10 or 12 tons per acre more towards 
the end of October. In spring another dressing of the water 
gives a cutting towards May, and a second and third cutting will be 
had, weighing 40 to 50 tons per imperial acre by the end of 
August. During the two years the land will have yielded be- 
tween 80 and 100 tons of green food per acre in seven cuttings 
by the use of 1 ton of guano and sulphate of ammonia and nitrate 
of soda washed in with 700 tons of water. Whether Canning 
Park still presents the same remarkable fact I do not know ; but 
the above are the particulars communicated to me five years ago 
by Mr. Telfer, when I walked over it. 
13. No list of English agricultural maxima is complete which 
omits the experience of the Rev. S. Smith, of Lois Weedon, 
Northamptonshire. His land in one field is a clay loam, and in 
another a clayed gravelly soil — it has borne successive wheat 
crops, in the one case for 13 years, and in the other for 8 years. 
The crop in the former case has averaged upwards of 35 bushels 
per acre, and has gradually increased, so that latterly it has 
been more nearly 5 quarters. What especially distinguishes this 
from ordinary agricultural experience is that these crops are ob- 
tained without the addition of manure. The Lois Weedon mode 
of growing wheat consists simply in the deep and thorough cul- 
tivation of wide fallowed intervals between adjacent triplet 
rows a foot apart from one another ; these wide intervals, a yard 
in breadth, are at once the feeding ground of this year's crop, 
and the seed-bed of the next. This cultivation, as conducted 
by Mr. Smith, costs 11. 3a'. 9f/. per acre, including rent and 
taxes (2Z. 4s. 3c?.), and it results in obtaining from what is really 
half the land a crop which would generally be considered a good 
one though taken from the whole of it — and this it yields annually 
and constantly. For a full account of the process and its result, 
the reader is referred to Mr. Smith's publications on ' Lois 
Weedon Culture' (Ridgway) ; both are referred to here as 
among existing agricultural maxima, though, like many another 
exceptional experience, they may be copied largely over the 
wheat soils of tliis country by all who shall carefully as well as 
