October 11, 1883. ] 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
315 
properly, of a trailing habit, and is useful when planted to scramble over 
loose stones on the rock garden, where its large and beautifully marked 
bell-shaped flowers render it very conspicuous. Its requirements are 
few, and like most of the Himalayan plants, it grows luxuriantly and 
flowers profusely in ordinary loam and leaf soil in a rather shady 
situation. Ihere is also a variety called C. grandiflorus, which is more 
ornamental than the above, the colour of the corolla being more varie¬ 
gated and with a more spreading calyx, the whole plant very much 
resembling a magnified Deadly Nightshade. 
' A veky novel and interesting industry has been started in the 
■South Seas by an American firm— the drying and preservation op 
local-grown fruit. The process used is called the Alden process, of 
which we have no details. The firm has 50 acres or more of Bananas 
■under cultivation, and intend also to buy from outside planters. The 
Bananas are first thrown into boiling syrup, and then subjected to the 
■drying process, the sugar crystallising upon the fruit and imparting a 
delicious flavour. If this plan of utilising this most nutritive and 
wholesome of fruits could be introduced into Queensland, thousands of 
acres might be grown for export, and the industry become most lucrative 
{The Queensland Planter and Farmer.) 
MR. GLADSTONE APPLE. 
Mr. Gladstone Apple was introduced to the trade by my father 
m 1868.. It is a chance seedling, of which there are so many in Wor¬ 
cestershire. The old tree is, I should say, a hundred years old, and is 
•located near here. It is much the finest early Apple we have, a sure 
bearer, and the old tree, although so ancient, shows no sign of decay. 
It ripens here about the 20th of July. If I am spared I will send you 
some fruits next season.— W. Jackson, Blaliedorvn Nursery, near 
Fid derm inster. 
GARDEN CHEMISTRY. % 
SOIL LOSSES. 
Ip manure be very thoroughly prepared, and be applied very 
near the surface, where it will be at once appropriated, the loss 
•of plant-food will be reduced to a minimum, but there will still 
be loss more or less preventible. For generations it has been 
known that lime disappears from soil to which it is applied, and 
its periodical application is therefore necessary. How this hap¬ 
pens has been explained under the head of “ Lime and Liming,” 
and therefore nothing further need be said on that matter. It 
may, however, be not so well known that applications of ammonia 
•chloride and sulphate determine the loss of an equal amount of 
lime. In the soil these salts are decomposed, the ammonia is 
fixed, and the sulphuric acid and the chlorine liberated. These 
combine with the lime present, and form calcic sulphate and 
chloride —extremely soluble salts, which may be detected in the 
■drainage water immediately after the first heavy rain following 
their application. The sulphuric acid and chlorine of potassic 
■salts are lost in the same manner. Indeed, as a rule, while the 
bases of manurial salts, such as potash and ammonia, are fixed 
by the soil, the acids are generally lost. Phosphoric acid is an 
exception to this rule, for either with iron or lime this speedily, 
fiowever soluble when applied, forms insoluble compounds, which 
repain in the soil until attacked by the roots of plants and 
utilised. 
Calcic carbonate, sulphate, and chloride losses are not serious, 
as they can be cheaply supplied in different forms; but nitrogen, 
not at all subject to loss in the form of organic compounds, such 
as it occurs in humus for instance, or even as ammonia, is very 
•soluble and easily lost when changed to nitrate. An erroneous 
idea prevails that clay in soil will hold such, no matter how 
much rain may pass through the soil. This has been shown to 
•be a mistake by none more clearly than by Sir J. B. Lawes, 
Dr. Gilbert, and Mr. Warrington at Rothamsted, although to 
Schluesing and Muntz belongs the credit of discovering the means 
by which the nitrification of nitrogenous organic matter, am¬ 
monia, urea, and similar substances is accomplished. 
It would occupy too much space to give the details of the 
process by which nitrification is accomplished. Suffice it to say 
that, it cannot go on unless organic nitrogenous matter, am¬ 
monia, &c., be present, also a salifiable base, such as lime, a 
certain degree of heat, and a ferment, which is an exceedingly 
minute organism and classed as a bacterium. These conditions 
exist in all fertile soils during summer and autumn, and the 
■consequence is that the process goes on almost continually; but 
it goes on most rapidly when the temperature is highest. We 
may have nitrogen as it exists in ammonia or in humus; we 
may have the bacteria which swarm in all surface soils; and 
we may have a salifiable base, such as lime; but if the tempe¬ 
rature be below or near freezing no action takes place. The 
oxidisation of the nitrogen in the soil does not proceed rapidly 
in winter; but as spring advances it begins, it goes on with 
accelerated pace in summer, and attains its maximum by the 
early autumn months. At Rothamsted it was found that a 
solution of proper materials, which took thirty-seven days for 
complete nitrification when the temperature was 52° Fahr., 
only required eight days when 86° was maintained. Scliloesing 
and Muntz have shown that at 99° nitrification is ten times more 
rapid than it is at 37 J . Hence the reason why Scotch loam is 
richer than English, and hence one of the great advantages of 
bottom heat, for in this country it is oniy in artificially heated 
soils that nitrification proceeds rapidly. 
Now naturally least nitrates are in the soil just when most 
wanted, in spring, and most when least wanted, in autumn, for 
these nitrates are very easily washed away. Hence the very 
strong reason for applying very near the surface thoroughly 
prepared manure when seeds are sown or plants put out. 
To show when nitrates are naturally most plentiful, and also 
how they are lost, a quotation may be made from a lecture 
delivered before the Society of Arts by Mr. Warrington some 
time ago. On that occasion he produced tables showing the 
average amount of nitrogen as nitrates in the drainage water 
from certain gauges constructed for the purpose. The soil was 
in fallow, and was unmanured. The figures are the averages of 
five years. I may reproduce part of the table. 
Amount of drainage. 
Nitrogen as nitrates. 
Rainfall. 
20-inch 
60-inch 
20-inch 
CO-inch 
gauge. 
gauge. 
gauge. 
gauge. 
January to March. 
5-78 
4-53 
4-34 
8-80 
9 92 
April to June. 
7'81 
2-22 
2-63 
5-06 
610 
July to September . 
10-07 
3-84 
3-46 
14-24 
10-80 
October to December . 
8 84 
6-24 
5-91 
16-72 
15-82 
Total. 
32-50 
16-83 
16-34 
44-82 
4264 
When it is said that 44'8 lbs. of nitrogen is equal to 287 lbs. 
of commercial nitrate of sodium it will be seen how serious a loss 
is thus suffered; and if so much nitrates are formed, partly no 
doubt from the nitrogen washed into the soil by rain, but chiefly, 
doubtless, from the using-up of the comparatively small store of 
humus in ordinary agricultural soils, what must it be in the very 
much richer soils of gardens P Of course heavily cropped land 
will not thus suffer loss, because very much of the nitrates will 
be used by the plants, and, as evaporation will be greater, not 
nearly so much water will appear as drainage. For instance, 
while 33 - 7 lbs. of nitrates were found after fallow per acre in the 
upper 18 inches of the soil, after Wheat only 2*6 lbs. were 
detected in the month of September. 
The main facts are these: in the autumn most nitrates are 
found in natural soils, and in the late autumn and early winter 
months most is washed into the drains or the subsoil. Now 
perhaps at no other season is there so much nitrates left to the 
mercy of the rains, for then not only is there much soil bare 
(neither covered with evaporating leaves nor searching roots), but 
then much manure is wheeled out from pits and spread over the 
ground or dug in. To show the error of this we need only quote 
from Mr. Warrington once again. In one instance, when 88 lbs. 
of nitrogen was given in autumn to Wheat, not less than 6G lbs. 
had been removed from the soil by drainage in four months and 
a half. Of course the nitrogen in ordinary manure is not so 
easily lost as that in the case of chemical salts, but that the 
loss in wet winters is very serious there can be no question at all. 
A chain is no stronger than its weakest link; nitrogen is the 
weakest link in ordinary manure; by allowing nitrates to escape, 
or even to provide for their escape, is making this link, and 
thereby the chain, much weaker. 
SAYING THE NITRATES. 
There can be no doubt that the best way to prevent the 
loss of nitrates is to keep the land continually under crop. 
When the soil is well filled with hungry roots, rapid production 
of soil nitrates only means rapid growth. Not only so, a dense 
leafage, with the active evaporation leaves effect, reduces, nay, 
often prevents, any water sinking deeply, even though rains are 
heavy. But it is not always possible to have ground cropped 
with growing crops. Potatoes, Cabbages, and a host of other 
things are removed, often too late for another crop to take their 
place till spring. In such cases it is customary to dig the soil 
up roughly and call it winter fallow. A far better plan would 
be to sow the ground very thickly with grass seeds, especially 
when the soil is very light or the rainfall great. Perhaps Italian 
Rye Grass is the best variety to apply for this purpose, as it has 
