i"AN. 1, 1901.] 
THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 
479 
FARMER'S EVERY I AY LIFE IM 
SCOTLAND. 
No. 16. 
{Bji Cosmopolite.) 
In a formev paper I expressed views any- 
thing but favourable to the value of 
ARTIFICIAL MANURES IN FARMING 
an;l as special attention was drawn to iny 
opinion by the editor of the Ohservei , I may 
be permitted to supplement what I wrote 
then with a few remarks. Of course, I know 
that the vendors of artificial manures are 
about the best customers any newspaper has, 
as they advertise wholesale, and so naturally 
editors are chary of putting any tiling into 
their papers likely to be prejudicial to their 
■customers' trade. I am not, however, wish- 
ing the proprietors of the Observer to adopt 
my views, at the same time I must he per- 
mitted, in these papers to tell what I have 
proved conclusiv^ely in my farmintr opera- 
tions. When I say that my artificial bill 
on my first few years' farming in Buchan 
amounted annually to over £200, and at the 
present time it amounts to nothing, it shows 
that I am at least, a believer in my own views ; 
and when I add that my crops only aver- 
aged 4J to 5 quarters per acre, during the 
years when I iised artificials, and now 
when using cattle and sheep manure only, 
they average 65 to 7^ quarters, I think I 
have good reason to compliment myself on 
the policy I have adopted. But although I 
am a non-believer in artificials, it does not 
follow that I take no interest in the investi- 
gations carried on at Rothamsted and other 
experimental farms, so that reading the ex- 
citing letters of Messrs. Talbot and Melville 
White, lately appearing in the Observer, has 
afforued me mucii pleasure. Of course, 
when a sufficient amount ot cattle manure 
cannot be obtained, as so often happened in 
Ceylon, some sort of artificial has to be 
applied and I observe that sulphate of am- 
monia and nitrate of soda are specially 
selected by the gentlemen named ; but it 
appears to me that they have not taken 
enough of trouble to learn what is the 
best time to ap))Iy these manures, hut 
have done so in a somewhat haphazard 
style. With regard to nitrate of soda, 
tor instance, it is readily absorbed and passes 
into the plant ; so, in farming, it is always 
applied after the corn blades are well deve- 
loped. If I was a tea planter and was apply- 
ing nitrate of soda to my bushes, I would 
wait .intil the flush of leaf had got a good 
start hefore doing so. Sulphate of ammonia 
on the other hand is not available until the 
ammonia absorbs oxygen and therefore does 
not come into action so quickly ; consequently 
it should be applied to the land sometime 
before the i)lant is I'eady to absorb it. It 
may interest my readei'S to be told that 
nitra'^e of soda a]ipUed to hay increases the 
bulk of crop very much, but makes it so 
rank and disagreeable to the taste that ani- 
mals will refuse to eat it unless compelled 
by hunger to do so. Would not the same 
eife 'be likely to occur in the case of tea 
leaves and if so what would the tea taster 
say about the flavour ? I gather from Messrs. 
Talbot's and Melville White's letters that the 
ject they have in view is not only the in- 
crease of crop, but the upkeep or restoration 
of fertility to the soil. I may mention there- 
fore that so exhausting to the soil is nitrate 
of soda, that many landlords prohibit its use 
altogether, and I don't blame them, for I know 
that sometime ago it became quite a custom 
with farmers whose leases were drawing to 
a close to manure with nitrate of soda for 
the last two or three years, and this took 
all the fertility out of the soil and left the 
incoming tenant some years of heavy ex- 
penditure in order to get the place into a 
productive state again. 
PAPER MAKING LECTURE. 
THE POS.SIBILITIES OF BAMBOO. 
Mr. Ainsley Walker, in his lecture on paper-mak- 
ing delivered at Croxley Mill, Hertfordshire, recently, 
dealt with raw fibres, and the sources from which 
they were obtained, and described the machinery 
employed to cleanse esparto grass and straw from 
dust and other impurities. Speaking of straw, he 
pointed out its curious property of producing a 
greasy effect after having been put through the 
beater. This enabled them to produce a sheet which 
had more rattle, or to use the paper-makers' phrase 
" tinny effect," than could be secured from grass. 
Straw gave a very hard fibre, and as it consisted 
of parenchyma cells, which, however, served as fill- 
ing the proportion of bass fibres was small, and a 
sheet of lees strength was obtainable than from grass 
was the result. Bamboo was introduced in 1870 by 
Mr. Boutledge who was also the means of bringing 
esparto grass to the notice of paper-makers. So 
enthusiastic was Mr. Boutledge over bamboo that 
he published a pamphlet on the subject, printed 
from bamboo fibre, and excellent paper it was too. 
Mr. Routledge predicted that in years to come 
bamboo would be the most prominent fibre used in 
industry. So far that prediction had not been ful- 
filled, because wood had in the meantime played such 
an important part in paper-making. Bamboo had 
been described as a gigantic straw, with which its phy- 
sical and chemical properties were closely allied. It 
therefore happened when they examined a sheet of 
paper under the microscope, that they founsl it no 
CdiSy matter to differentiate the two classes of fibre 
for both had in considerable quantities the char,a- 
teristic parenchyma cells and the cuticular cells. Tc 
this day the problem of readily and satisfactorily 
resolving bamboo into fibre remained unsolved. The 
difficulty he believed, was in knowing just how to 
boil it. He had experimented himself aud though he 
had obtained fairly good results, he had not really suc- 
ceeded. The subject thus presented a great opportu- 
nity to those students who desire to obtain honours 
for original research. Mr. Koutledge stated that 
THE BA3IB00 YIELDED AS MUCH AS 40 TONS 
of green stem per acre, and that these when dry were 
equal to six tons. The bamboo also grew at an 
almost incredible rate. It was said that it would grow 
to a height of 40 feet in 40 days, which was actually 
one toot a day. Here were possibilities for paper- 
makers in these days of keen competition. Paper- 
makers had been told that they had a sad state of 
things to look forward to in the future, but, if suit- 
able means could be found for its treatment, they 
had bamboo to fall back upon. Therefore if the worst 
came to the worst, they could go to the wilds of India 
and establish the industry where the raw material 
would grow at their doors. The stems of the bamboo 
were cut before the plants arrived maturity, and 
that was all the treatment that was necessary be- 
fore boiling. This brought them to those great 
sources of fibre — mechanical and chemical wood. 
Mechanical wood was obtained mostly from white 
pine, the poplar, and the aspen. These woods 
produced a fine, bright and white effect. They were 
cut into lepgths equivalent t9 the width of the 
