Analyses of Ashes of Plants. 
663 
Again, does climate exercise any influence on the quantity of 
ash of wheat ? So far as the differences of locahty afforded by 
Sir John Johnstone's specimens in Yorkshire, Mr. Huxtable's in 
Dorsetshire, Mr. Morton's in the Vale of Gloucester, and our 
own on the Cotswolds, can afford an answer to this question, it is 
already given. Climate does not exert any marked influence on 
the quantity of ash in the grain. 
We have, however, better instances than these, in the result of 
the estimation of ash in several specimens of foreign grain: — 
Table VII. — Per centage of Ash in the grain of Foreign Wheats. 
French wheat 
1-55 
Rostock wheat 
1-61 
Egyptian wheat . 
1-97 
Spanish wheat , 
1-65 
Odessa wheat . 
1-50 
Dantzic wheat 
1-71 
Marianople wheat . 
1-70 
Ditto 
1-40 
Rostock wheat . 
1-46 
Ditto 
1-47 
Here we observe 
differences 
which are as great. 
though not 
greater than in specimens from the soils of our own country. 
Warm climates cannot be said to favour the abstraction (by the 
grain) of mineral matter from the soil, for in Spanish wheat we 
have a low per centage of ash ; and although the Egyptian grain 
gives more ash than any other specimen we have examined, the 
excess is hardly worth notice. 
Spec. — . Egyptian wheat gives . . .1*97 
„ 21. From Yorkshire . . . .1-94 
„ 53. April wheat from Worcester . . 1*92 
„ 47. From Mr. Morton . . . 1'90 
We cannot then give to the climate credit for creating differ- 
ences in respect to the quantity of ash in the grain. 
If climate create no difference, aspect and locality are equally 
insufficient to account for the observed discrepancies. 
But though the character of the soil (that is, whether it be 
light or heavy, silicious or calcareous), though the variety of the 
crop, the climate, aspect, and locality, do not seem materially or 
uniformly to influence the quantity of ash, there is still another 
circumstance which may in part affect the question ; — this is, the 
mineral constitution of the soil, irrespective of texture — the quan- 
tity and condition of mineral food at the command of the crop ; 
and although we cannot speak positively on the point, there is 
evidence in favour of the view, which does not exist for any of the 
others. 
In the early part of this Report several specimens of wheat are 
described as having been grown in the same field on the College 
farm. In this field, as before mentioned, a singular failure of 
two consecutive crops of turnips had occurred — the first of them, 
before the farm came into the hands of this College. 
