788 
Notes on French Agriculture. 
English wheats of the harvest of 1892 were germinated in 
October of that year. The subjoined table shows the result. 
Number of grains germinated per 100 after — 
Number of Days— 5 7 9 12 14 16 19 21 24 
Wheat No. 1 (17-85 per cent, of water) 1 16 33 50 67 72 84 95 99 
Wheat No. 2 (17-23 „ „ ) 25 81 96 96 99 — 
Part of this same wheat was left for eight days in an oven at 
a temperature of 30° Cent. (86° Fahr.). The speed of germination 
was quite altered, as is shown by the following table : — 
Number of Days — 3 5 7 9 
Wheat No. 1 (13 76 per cent, of water) . . 4 64 88 99 
Wheat No. 2 (13-45 „ „ ) . . 72 99 — — 
The duration of germination is reduced from twenty-four days to 
nine days for Wheat No. 1, and from fourteen days to five days for 
Wheat No. 2. By drying grain and depriving it of part of its water 
germination is much accelerated. M. Schribaux strongly recom- 
mends this practice, not only for wheat, but for all seeds. 
The remaining pai-ts of the reviews are taken up with market 
fluctuations and quotations, to which are added the average prices 
of all articles used or produced by farmers. Being published 
fortnightly, these quotations are of much value. 
J. H. Thorold. 
Sj'ston Park, Grantham. 
THE ASSESSMENT OF AGRICULTURAL LAND. 
There is perhaps no subject so uninteresting to the ordinary 
individual as the assessment of property for rating and taxation. 
All of us have to pay rates and taxes, but few of us take the 
trouble to find out how or on what principle our property is assessed 
for them. For the most part we pay and grumble ; we look upon 
the delivery of those wretched scraps of blue or white paper, called 
“demand notes,” as necessary evils; we know that the tax 
gatheper or rate collector will inevitably call upon us ; that he will 
knock at our doors, whether we live in the humble farmhouse or the 
landlord’s mansion. Occasionally, however, some, or a certain class 
of us, feel the payment to be such a serious matter — so heavy a 
burden — that we are driven to consider the matter closely in order 
to find out, if we can, whether the payments demanded from us are 
no more than what they ought to be, or it may be to find out some 
mode by which we can escape them altogether. And this has 
now happened to the occupiers of agricultural land in many parts 
of England, whose gross takings from the land they occupy are so 
small that the relief from payments which in more prosperous times 
