THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST [February i, 1888. 
AGRICULTURE ON THE CONTINENT OF 
EUROPE. 
(Special Letter.) 
Paris, 24th December 1887. 
Nearly one-third of the vineyards of France have 
been destroyed by the phylloxera whose ravages have 
received as yet no wholesale check. Farmers who have 
thus suffered, turned whenever practicable the land into 
meadow, or cropped it with grain and roots. After 
some years had elapsed under this system of changed 
culture, the soil when dosed with spcial industrial 
manures seems to have recovered, and to present a 
new departure for successful vine culture as well as 
ameliorating those vines which are not a prey to either 
a parasite or a fungus. 
Farmyard manure is the usual fertilizer applied to 
the vine. As the latter grows often in sloping situa- 
tions, and difficult of cart-access, that manure is thus 
expensive and out of proportion to its value. Hence 
the plan of employing chemical fertilizers judiciously 
as phosphates, potash, and nitrogenous matters, which 
present many advantages. On the first appearance of 
the phylloxera, Liebig laid down that the high feed- 
ing of the vines was one powerful means for combating 
the scourge ; they could resist the insect better than a 
vine badly nourished. Becchi, the director of the 
agronomic station of Florence, attested by his ex- 
periments in 1866-68, that the application of potash 
salts to the soil enables the vines to resist the oidium, 
better than those receiving farmyard manure. The 
Swiss attribute the relative exemption of their vines 
from the attacks of the phylloxera to the use of 
chemical manures — •another illustration of Liebig's 
assertion, that a sickly and famished plant falls the 
earliest viotim of disease. The animal world also affords 
apt illustrations of this truth. 
Messrs. Boussingault and Grandeau have analysed 
the soils of vineyards in Alsace and the Champagne 
districts, as well as vine cuttings, the vine produced 
and the residuum or pulp of the press. Assuming 
18,000 vines to the acre and 880 gallons as the average 
yield of vine, a vintage would remove, from au acre 
of land about 14 lb. of potash and 8 lb: of phosphoric 
acid. Now, wheat abstracts from the soil nearly four 
times the amount of phosphoric acid and the quantity 
of potash is nearly the same ; while potatoes remove 
four times the quantity of potash and double the 
amount of phosphoric acid as the vine. In the Cham- 
pagne districts the soil famous for producing the most 
renowned branch, only approach in point of richness 
to ordinary arable lands. Here farmyard manure would 
suit vineyards. In the Champagne regions, and less 
so in those of Burgundy, the soil is calcareous. Quite 
the contrary is the case in the Bordeaux or Claret 
regions where the soil is markedly silicious, poor in 
potash and lime, but notably rich in magnesia ; at 
least such is the out-come of the aualyses of the soils 
of such producing claret-brands as Chateaux Laffitlc, 
Yquem, and Blargaux. 
It will thus be seen that the vine has no grexter 
mineral exigencies, but rather the contrary than 
other cultivated plants; that the composition of the 
soils in Champagne, Burgundy and Bordeaux, differs in 
poorness in potash and phosphoric acid ; yet all can 
be ameliorated by suitably selected fertilizers just as 
ordinary soils, whilst the latter have everywhere 
produced by their slower action the best results. 
Now for the vine, as for other shrubs, the application 
Of farmyard manure has a tendency to promote the 
development of wood. Nitrate of soda and sulphate 
of ammonia by the rapidity of their action induce the 
undue growth of branches and leaves at the expense 
of the fruit. 'Woollen rags, torrefied leather refuse, 
dried blood, oil-cake &c , if cheap, are excellent vine 
manures as they decompose slowly and thus magazine 
their nitrogenous or stimulating influence. Natural 
phosphates dephosphorized scoria or slag, kainite, &c, 
are also excellent fertilizers. Chemically a manure 
sufficient for the demands of the vine duriog ten 
years, excluding the leaves which naturally fall and 
remain, ought to contain in pounds weight 132 of 
nitrogen, 220 potash, and 176 of phosphoric acid per 
acre, representing a market cost of 170fr. or about 17fr* 
per annum, for ten years Ten gallons of wine yearly, 
out of the augmented annual yield of one-fifth would 
pay for the outlay. 
There are many farmers on the Continent who have 
never accepted the substitution either in whole or in part 
of maize for oats in hor6e-feeding. Indeed 6ome go the 
length of asserting, if maize dominated over oats the best 
breed of horses in the land would ultimately die 
out. Maize, it is alleged, runs the horse into flesh 
and fat ; the animal becoming spiritless instead of 
hard muscle, an energetic and vigorous character. 
Feeding entire horses on maize reduces them to the 
vitality of castrated animals. Further maize diminishes 
the vigor of mares in the rearing of their foals, 
developing indolence instead of energy. However, no 
one wholly excluded oats from the ration, but reduced 
that aliment next to an algebraic x. There is in oats 
a special principle or stimulus that no other grain 
possesses — independent of the question of relative 
richness — and peculiarly adapted for the development 
of vigor while enabling the animal to recruit rapidly 
its exhausted strength. 
The poultry yard of late is receiving more attention 
as a source of revenue. It is now no longer left to the 
side attentions of the farmer's wife. Poultry fatting 
in a word is becoming a profitable busiuess. Like the 
fattening of live stock the object is to impart a 
superior quality to the flesh by rendering it more 
tender, more savory, more easy of digestioD. To 
effect this successfully and with profit, the animal must 
be fed abundantly from its birth — so as to aid the deve- 
lopment of muscle — by an alimentation rich in nitrogen 
substantial and of small volume. By degrees the ra- 
tion is augmented with substances rich in sugar fecula 
or fat. If the chickens belong to a good and pre- 
cocious breed, and received ordinary care and feeding, 
they will in three or four months be able to be sold off 
to the fattener. 
The fatting process must not commence till the 
animal has almost completed its development. If earlier 
the high feeding will produce muscle and bone, not fat 
If the adult age be exceeded it will rarely pay to fatten 
such birds. Pulletsof the Crevecoeur race can com- 
mence to be fattened at four months ; the Houdan and 
Dorking at five, Fleche at six, and the Bresse at 
seven or eight. The season most favourable to fatten- 
ing is the close of autumn or winter. If hatched 
in March or June, the chickens would thus be 
ready for fattsning operations at the foregoing 
epochs. The castration of the birds of both sexes dates' 
from antiquity, and takes place when they are about 
three months old. In some countries the operation is 
dispensed with. To supply fat-forruing food U not 
the be-all of fattening ; care must be taken that 
the fat when produced be not eliminated from the 
system. Hence, keep the muscles inactive; in other 
words coop the birds in pigeon-ho'.es just capacious 
enough to allow them standing room ; above all let 
the place where they are kept be dark, as light is 
an exciting agent, and so consumes muscle. This ex- 
plains why formerly poultry to be fattened bad their 
eyes extracted. 
The simplest manner to fatten is to place a small 
trough in front of the crib filled with a paste of 
average thickness consisting of barley, buck-wheat, 
or maize fluur, wetted with skim milk or cheese- 
whey. Add a little salt, prepare the paste the eve 
before using it to allow fermentation, and thus 
facilitate digestion. Pending the first five days, feed 
twice a day, afterwards give the paste three times 
daily, Some fatteuers commence by giving cru.-hed 
buck-wheat and maize the firi-t three and uubruisod 
oats during the last two days. Tnree weeks suffice 
for the whole process ; some pullets demand more 
time. Ordinarily, out of 100 birds, three successive 
selections are made for the market. Fattening me- 
chanically consists in forcing small balls of the 
paste by means of a machine, down the throat of 
