434 
Wheat. 
dry  land.  If  sprinkled  during  spring  in  dripping  weather  or  on  a 
dewy  morning,  it  adheres  to  the  leaf,  and  has  been  known  to  push 
the  plant  so  as  to  cover  the  ground,  and  keep  it  moist  to  this 
degree,  that  the  gypsed  clover  becomes  a good  crop,  while  the 
ungypsed  clover  is  burnt  up  by  the  drought.  Peat  ashes  are 
applied  here  in  the  same  way  with  the  rising  sun,  and  they 
consist  largely  of  gypsum.  It  seems  almost  certain  that  this 
mineral  manure  is  absorbed  into  the  leaf  of  the  plant. 
Fourth  Year. — Wheat. 
There  is  no  crop  about  which  we  should  be  so  cautious  in 
speaking  as  about  the  wheat  crop.  If  you  give  a root  crop  more 
help  than  is  necessary,  you  waste  so  much  money  unless  the 
manure  remain  in  the  ground ; but  if  wheat  be  over-fed,  in  a wet 
season  it  goes  down,  or  in  a dry,  cold  May  it  is  mildewed.  Last 
August  1 observed,  beyond  mistake  on  a close  examination,  that 
the  better  the  land  the  more  was  the  wheat  mildewed  ; the  better 
farmed  the  same  land,  the  more  was  it  also  mildewed,  and  that 
the  only  bright  yellow  crops,  neither  mildewed  nor  laid,  were  to 
be  found  on  cold  clay  lands,  rather  out  of  condition.  It  is 
evidently  impossible,  therefore,  to  propose  any  general  rule  for  its 
culture:  Mr.  Lawes  has  shown  that  what  it  wants  is  ammonia. 
All  our  received  wheat  manures  are  in  fact  nitrogenous, — dung, 
woollen  rags,  rape-cake,  but  the  test  of  a practical  farmer  is  to  hit 
the  right  mean.  Any  one  can  make  his  wheat  look  green  in 
winter,  but  the  experienced  eye  does  not  like  it  to  look  grassy  at 
Christmas.  Even  if  it  be  right  then,  the  east  winds  of  February 
or  March  may  set  it  wrong.  The  plants  change  colour  and  dis- 
appear, one  knows  not  how,  some  with  the  wireworm  ; at  last  (I 
am  speaking  of  light  land)  large  patches  of  ground  become  almost 
bare.  Rolling  and  wheel- pressing  are  good  against  this;  but  the 
clod-crusher,  which  dints  the  ground  like  a flock  of  sheep,  is  the 
best  of  all.  We  may  also  venture,  but  with  great  caution,  to  top- 
dress  with  guano,  or  even,  as  is  done  by  one  of  the  best  farmers  in 
Norfolk,  with  about  3 cwt.  of  nitrate  of  soda,  adding  2 cwt.  of  salt 
to  strengthen  the  straw,  an  effect  of  salt  upon  some  land  that  has 
been  known  many  years,  though  I have  not  found  it  so  act  upon  my 
own  farm.  Wheat  plants,  however,  so  thinned  and  so  stimulated, 
are  inclined  to  tiller  unduly,  whence  mildew  may  follow.  If  we 
could  eradicate  one  cause  of  this  failure  of  plants,  the  wireworm, 
we  should  do  much,  and  of  all  the  methods,  one  proposed  in  the 
last  Journal  by  Mr.  Charnock  * seems  the  most  promising, — a 
top-dressing  of  5 cwt.  of  rape-cake  per  acre  broken  in  lumps. 
The  wireworms  are  said  to  eat  their  way  into  these  lumps,  and 
* Vol.  xi.,  p.  183.  It  appears  by  Mr.  Curtis's  paper  on  the  Wireworm,  that  Lord 
Albemarle  also  recommended  the  same  remedy. 
