8 5 8 
THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 
[June i, 1889. 
HELLRIEGEL'S THEORY : NITRATES. 
( Co?)i»ninirnlcd.) 
How it is that leguminous crops which are so rich 
iu nitrogenous matter yet do not leave the sr.il ex- 
hausted of its nitrates and other compounds of nitrogen, 
is a question that has Ion? bothered the minds of Agri- 
cultural Chemists and Botanists. In fact, it has almost 
been given up as a problem without a solution. Hell- 
riegel, a well-known continental authority and Direc- 
tor of the Experimental Station at Bernberg, propounds 
a theory to account for this peculiarity of the legu- 
minous plants. In carrying out some experiments 
with regard to the amount of nitrogenous manuring 
required by different crops, he was struck by the fact 
that the application of these manures to leguminous 
crops gave results far short of what might have been 
expected. The cereals showed results varying almost 
proportionately with the supply of nitrogenous 
manure. On artificial soil devoid of any nitrogenous 
ingredients the cereals failed entirely, while the 
legumes throve. This gave Hellriegel sufficient 
grounds for believing that the leguminous crops 
found a source of nitrogen elsewhere than in the 
soil. The roots of clovers, beans, &c. have wart-like 
protuberances, the functions of which have long re- 
mained a puzzle. The contents of these warts, when 
pressed out and subjected to microscopic examina- 
tion, turn out to be of the nature of fungi, bacteria, 
or organisms like bacteria — bacterioids as they have 
been called. It is known to Agriculturists that certain 
bacteria, known as nitrifying germs, have the power 
of attacking the inert nitrogenous material in soil, 
nnd converting them into nitrates in which form they 
are more avilable as plint food. Hellriegel, however 
claims for the bacterioids contained in the warts on 
leguminous roots, that they are able to work up the 
uncombined nitrogen of the air into valuable com- 
pounds. This is a very natural conclusion considering 
the fact that leguminous plants thrive on soils totally 
destitute of nitrogenous matter ; and what is more, 
leave a 6tore of nitrogenous plant food behind. 
What an opportunity there is for improving our 
sandy soils without the expense of manuring, on 
this theory ! — Local " Examiner." 
A TKIP TO BRITISH BURMA. 
The Bubmah State Railway — Poor Hundhed 
Miles op Paddy Fields. 
Of all the dreary uninteresting stretches of country 
to pass through by rail, I commend the tract of level 
land lying alone the course of the Sittang, with the 
Karennee Hills on the one side and the Pegue range 
on the other. This line of Railway, on the metre- 
gauge, passes Pegue, the ancient capital of that por- 
tion of Burma — now entirely destroyed— Toungboo, 
a large military station, and Yemethen, a new station 
rapidly increasing, and was opened into Mandalay on 
the 1st of March, being 386 miles in length. 
At six o'clock on a cool, misty morning the train 
ran out of the busy, dusty port of Rangoon, with 
its hundred tall chimnies giving forth volumes of 
smoke from the paddy husks and sawdust which are 
used as fuel, out into the almost boundless stretch 
of paddy fields, as far as the eye can see on all 
sides— at this season dusty and dried up, and the 
stubble burnt off. A few little huts and heaps of 
straw, and a few small villages at lengthened dis- 
tances, a buffalo here and there, and a few paddy 
stacks, a few hawks and crows, and a few vultures 
— such a dreary, dusty, arid waste I never saw be- 
fore ! But Burma dry and Burma wet are very diffe- 
rent places, and I found it easy to conceive the diffe- 
rence when this plain is green with paddy, and 
everything looking lively, though where the popula- 
tion comes from, to bring the land under cultivation 
is, to a stranger, one of those things which "no 
fellar" can understand; the only solution being, I 
bcliove, the real one, that immense numbers of Indian 
coolies come over and work for the proprietors of 
the fields, and, when the crop is reaped, find occu- 
pation at the mills and in the town, or return to 
their own country much in the same way as the 
Irish were accustomed to do before the introduction 
of steam machinery into the agricultural counties of 
England. For the first fifty miles or so the stations 
seem to be iu very unpromising situations, where 
population is very scant at this season, and tbey 
rejoice in such elegant appellations too ! For in- 
stance, Toggyaunggale, Pyinbouggi, Paungdawthe, 
Nvaungbyidaik, &c, &c, iu fact— one might as well 
be in Wales a« regards unpronounceable names. All 
manners and conditions of folks are to be noticed 
travelling by rail, and crowding the train to over- 
flowing. Perhaps, after the extravagances in turbans 
and bead-gear of the Indians, the most noticeable 
individuals are the Shans, the men with broad flap- 
ping straw hat;-, four feet wide, short jackets and 
loose, short, blue trousers; the women in long smocks, 
bedecked with bits of tassels and fringes, and the 
cloth reaching to the ankles, much after the repre- 
sentations of Jewesses in the old picture-Bible of child- 
hood's happy days. Men and women alike carry on 
their backs funnel-shaped baskets, tied with a band 
round the forehead, and some of them carry about 
the children in the same way. Almost all the em- 
ployes on the line — signal men, station coolies, &c, 
&c, — are Indians, most of them wearing shoes or boots 
of some kind, an 1 a few swells with stockings as 
well, mostly of a dull red color. By-and-bye we get 
up into rising lands where bamboo jungle prevails 
at intervals, or in clumps between the paddy fields, 
and again long stretches of plain, with a few trees 
dotting it, and a house or small village with its ruined 
dagoba or residence of the priests. Iu one place 
there were a few plants of manna grass apparently 
cultivated as a curiosity. Still further along the line, 
one hundred and fifty to two hundred miles from 
Rangoon, there are tracts of jungle, with tall grass 
rising to four or five feet in height, and still further 
a stretch of cactus, precisely similar to the cactus 
of Hamhantota, with a broad ovai-leaved species at 
one spot only. The rise above the sea-level is small 
and gradual, totalling so small an amount in the 
whole length that I am afraid to put it down. Every- 
thing is dry and dreary ; the grass in some instances 
burning fiercely right up to the line; but the whole 
of this country is suitable for paddy (which is growu 
without help from artificial irrigation), having at one 
time been under water, and is many feet deep in the 
deposit brought down from the upper course of the 
rivers — probably the Irrawaddy, which now takes its 
course from Mandalay more to the west and runs 
down 600 miles to the sea. By casual ob-ei vation, of 
course, errors are naturally fallen into, but there 
seems a happy-go-lucky system, or want of system, 
in dealing with the native passeuger traffic which is 
amusing in the extreme. The carriages are entered 
at the end, and there is a short connecting platform 
with a st' p on each side. The natives ofien sit or 
stand on these for want of better accommodation, 
and there is nothing whatever to prevent them from 
getting out ou the wrong side when the train stops 
and clearing off alone the line; and, when the engine 
is being watered, they do get down in numbers for 
various purposes and move about just as they like. 
By-and-bye more restrictions will have to be used iu 
order to secure everyone paying for the use of the 
line. How they manage to stow away their goods 
and chattels is another matter. One sees a fellow 
with a pingoe and two large flat bamboo cages, each 
three to four feet in diameter; men with bundles 
of bamboos six to eight feet long ; big boxes and 
bundles of all kinds; a woman moving through the 
crowd with a big baby and a great chatty containing 
a flowering plant with straggling branches two or 
three feet long getting into her own eyes and thot-e 
of everyone else; everybody laughing and joking, and 
the railway people shouting iu Hindustani or Tamil 
and letting the passengers take care of themselves. 
And, when everyone seems settled down — with water 
from the big jar on the platform, or tea from the 
