AGRieULTURaL mAGAZIIlS, 
COLOMBO. 
Added as a Supplement MontMu to the ^'TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST." 
The following pages include the Contents of the Agricultural Magazi?i9 
for July : — 
Vol. X.] AUGUST, 1898. [No. 2. 
"BAREEN soils; 
uLyF^^^S ^' 911 article on the sources of plant 
^'^'^'^^j f^"'^ purticularly of nitrogen, 
written by us for tlie Magazine 
some years ago, we drew attou- 
UMBmSimI tion to the fact of many plants 
which are cliaracteristic of almost purely silicious 
soils, thriving with apparently no adequate supply 
of nitrogenous food, and went on to indicate the 
likely sources of such plant food in the case of these 
plants. 
In his Eeport on the Agriculture of Zanzibar 
for last year, the Director, referring to "Soils'" 
remarks that the soils over the cultivated portions 
of the Island are of a very light sandy character, 
A sample of this kind of soil was sent to Dr. 
Voelcker, the Consulting Chemist to the Koyal 
Agricultural Society of England, who reported 
ou it as follows: — 
Dried at 212° F. 
* Organic matter and loss ou heating ... 3-83 
Oxide of iron ... ••• 2'28 
Alumina ... ... 534 
Lime ... ... ••• "23 
Magnesia ... ... ••• "33 
Potash ... ... ••• '10 
Soda ... ... ••• '0' 
Phosphoric acid ... "05 
Sulphuric acid ... ... '02 
Insoluble silicates and sand ...87 00 
100 00 
* Containing nitrogen 0-09. 
" The Soil is one of a light loamy to sandy nature, 
"Judging its composicion by the foregoing analy 
" tical figures, it will be seen it is one of a miserably 
"poor character, and has every evidence of being 
" a thoroughly exhausted Soil, so that apart from 
" the objection you mention, as existing in the pan 
"of hard sand, there is so little fertility in the Soil 
" that I am not surprised to hear that the clovee 
" grown on it are unproductive. 
"The Soil has in the first place a deficiency of 
" vegetable matter and is very poor in Nitrogen. 
" Next there is very little Lime present, only a 
" small portion of Potash, while in Phosporic acid 
" in particular there is a most marked deficiency, 
" In brief, in all the constituents which are needed 
" to make a Soil fertile, this one is exceptionally 
"deficient, and the Soil is clearly quite impover- 
'•' ished, It seems to me, iudeed, a question whether 
" such a soil would bear the cost of any large outlay 
'■' in manuring of an artificial nature. The exist- 
"ence of the 'pan' of which you speak must be 
" always detrimental and, unless this can be broken 
" up by cultivation, it would be waste to spend 
" much in manures upon it. Moreover, what the 
" Soil needs, rather than artificial manuring, is the 
" liberal application of bulky materials, such as 
" cattle manure ; leaf and simil.ir refuse of a vege- 
" table nature ; wood ashes ; anything in short 
" which will give the Soil better texture and more 
" substance," 
On the Director pointing out that the Soil 
in question produced, as a rule, vegetation of 
a luxuriant character, and suggested that this 
miqht be accounted for by the abundant and 
