Magazine  of  the  School  of  Agriculture. 
55 
serving  and  utilizing  to  their  fullest  extent 
all  the  droppings  of  the  animals  kept  on  the 
land.  The  manner  in  which  cattle  manure  is 
allowed  to  lie  exposed  to  the  severity  of  the  weather 
when,  at  a small  cost,  a covering  can  be  pro- 
vided which  will  he  the  means  of  preventing 
any  loss  of  the  valuable  ingredients  the  manure 
supplies,  cannot  be  too  strongly  condemned.  Mr. 
Hoole  gives  special  hints  of  an  instructive 
nature  as  to  s: orage,  preservation,  and  applica- 
tion of  farmyard  manure.  The  pamphlet  under- 
review  has  the  special  merit  of  being  a simple 
treatise,  free  from  scientific  details,  and  it  is 
intended  to  have  selections  from  the  essay 
rendered  into  the  Vernacular  for  the  Sinhalese 
Agricultural  Information  Leaflet  which  is  so 
widely  circulated.  Wo  quote  the  following  pas- 
sages specially  referring  to  our  native  cultiva 
tors  : — “ In  conclusion  let  me  point  out  the  great 
ignorance  and  negligence  that  exists  among 
most  of  our  countrymen  about  farmyard  manure. 
They  are  blind  as  regards  its  valuable  qualities. 
True,  some  of  them  manure  their  fields  and  gardens 
with  it  ; but  this  is  more  the  exception  than 
the  rule,  especially  in  the  South  and  West  of 
our  Island.  It  is  astonishing  to  see  the  reck- 
less manner  in  which  valuable  manure  is  wasted 
by  the  majority  of  ourgoiyas,  They  care  nc  thing 
for  the  large"  quantity  of  droppings  that  may- 
be had  on  the  roads  and  compounds  and  from 
the  public  cattle  stalls.  This  indeed  is  bad 
enough,  but  it  is  shocking  to  find  that  they  do 
not  make  cattle  sheds  for  housing  their  own 
animals  at  night  and  collecting  the  manure. 
They  are  sometimes  tied  in  the  open  ; but  very 
often  they  are  left  to  wander  about  on  the 
roads,  jungles,  meadows,  &c.  Many  villagers  seem 
to  have  a prejudice  against  the  use  of  farm- 
yard manures. .....  .One  reason  why  the  Jaffna 
paddy-fields  are  more  productive,  notwithstanding 
the  natural  drawbacks  in  the  soil  and  climate, 
is  the  extensive  use  of  farmyard  manure.  The 
cultivators  of  the  North  avail  themselves  of 
every  scrap  of  manure  procurable  and  turn  it 
to  good  account.  But  even  there  several  im- 
provements are  necessary,  especially  in  the  making 
of  manure  and  the  preservation  of  the  manure 
heaps. 
“ The  village  farmers  all  over  our  Island  must 
be  taught  better  about  farmyard  manure.  They 
do  not  know  its  real  virtues.  They  either  neg- 
lect them  through  laziness,  or  lose  them  through 
ignorance.  Some  are  still  unaware  of  the  ferti- 
lizing character  of  the  liquid  portions  of  farm- 
yard manure.  I have  even  seen  people  scru- 
pulously thinning  aside  bits  of  straw  soaked 
with  urine,  lest  they  should  deteriorate  the 
manure.  They  leave  their  manure  heaps  to  the 
mercy  of  the  elements  ; and  many  a time  you 
may  have  seen  cartloads  after  cartloads  of  dry, 
rain-washed,  worthless  stuff  emptied  into  the 
fields  as  farmyard  manure  and  applied  to  them 
with  feelings  of  perfect  satisfaction. 
All  this  is  very  deplorable  and  calls  for  the 
aid  of  enlightened  scientific  knowledge.  It  is 
therefore  our  duty  to  show  our  lazy  and  ignorant 
countrymen  both  by  precept  and  practice— by 
example  and  instruction — the  real  nature  and 
value  of  farmyard  manure,  and  the  proper 
method  of  preserving  and  utilizing  it  to  the 
test  advantage,” 
THE  STUDY  OF  FORESTRY, 
Professor  McAlpine,  of  Edinburgh,  in  delivering 
the  opening  address  of  the  Forestry  class  in  the 
Glasgow  Technical  College,  stated  at  the  outset 
that  there  were  three  situations  in  which  plants 
were  grown- — (1)  in  the  field,  (2)  in  the  garden, 
and  (3)  in  the  forest.  The  man  who  produced 
plants  in  the  field  was  the  agriculturist  ; in  the 
garden,  the  gardener ; and  in  the  forest,  the  fores- 
ter. With  plant  production  in  the  field  and  in  the 
garden  they  had  there  nothing  to  do  ; their  busi- 
ness in  that  class  would  be  with  the  plants  in  the 
forest,  and  in  the  forest  alone.  In  dealing  with 
forest  production,  the  skill  possessed  by  the 
forester  determined,  to  a very  large  extent,  the 
profit  realised.  There  were,  however,  two  kinds 
of  skill— the  practical  skill  gained  from  long  ex- 
perience, and  which  had,  he  was  bound  to  say, 
reached  a high  degree  of  perfection  in  Great  Bri- 
tain, and  the  skill  to  be  derived  from  a genuine 
scientific  knowledge  of  the  principles  underlying 
the  growth  and  production  of  trees  in  the  forest. 
Practical  experience  was,  no  doubt,  valuable,  but 
it  only  carried  them  up  to  a certain  point ; they 
were  still  without  a thorough  knowledge  of,  and 
the  reasons  for,  the  different  changes  that  took 
place  in  the  course  of  the  growth  of  forest  trees. 
It  was  quite  evident  that  the  best  forester,  and 
the  one  that  could  attain  to  the  highest  maximum 
profit  in  the  production  of  timber,  was  the  man 
who  combined  practical  with  scientific  skill  in  his 
practice.  In  these  days  of  keen  competition,  it 
was  necessary  in  forestry,  as  everything  else,  that 
they  should  produce  the  best  quality  at  the  lowest 
possible  cost,  and  this  could  not  be  done  unless 
their  knowledge  was  good  and  sound,  and  their 
methods  of  the  most  economical  and  satisfactory 
description.  Scientific  skill  in  forestry  had  often 
been  regarded  as  of  no  practical  merit,  but  with- 
out it  the  maximum  profit  could  not  be  realised 
from  the  trees.  In  that  class  he  proposed  to  tell 
them  something  of  what  science  and  scientific 
knowledge  had  to  do  with  the  subject  of  forestry, 
and  he  proposed  to  deal  with  it  under  two  leading 
heads — (1)  forest'  botany,  and  (2)  the  forest 
itself.  The  great  object  of  the  forester  was  to 
produce  timber,  and  to  him  the  plant  was  a lignin- 
making machine.  This  lignin,  the  characteristic 
constituent  of  wood,  was  easily  identified  by  the 
red  colour  produced  by  the  action  of  pliloroglucin 
and  hydrochloric  acid.  Wood,  taken  as  a whoie, 
was  a combustible  mixture,  composed  chiefly  of 
the  three  elements — carbon,  hydrogen,  and  oxygen. 
In  introducing  such  a subject  as  the  scientific 
study  of  forestry,  it  was  important  to  know  what 
timber  was  made  from.  It  was  very  often  stated, 
and  very  widely  supposed,  that  the  organic 
matter,  or  humus,  in  the  soil  was  the  substance 
used  by  the  plant  for  timber  production.  Such  a 
doctrine  was  quite  untenable,  since  the  amount  of 
humus  was  not  diminished  by  the  production  and 
grow-th  of  trees,  but  was,  as  they  must  all  know, 
rather  increased.  The  method  of  water  culture 
also  proved  beyond  a doubt  that  the  constituents 
actually  employed  by  the  tree  plant  for  the  pro- 
duction of  its  woody  substance  were  water  from 
the  soil  and  carbon  dioxide  from  the  air.  He  had 
himself  seen  in  Germany,  where,  as  they  knew, 
great  attention  was  devoted  to  the  production  of 
the  best  class  of  forest  timber,  a pair  of  alder  trees 
