530 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
[ December 15, 1887. 
MANURES IN RELATION TO AGRICULTURE. 
£in address delivsred by Mr. Edward Luckhu-at at a meeting of the lx worth Farmers’ 
Club, on December 1st, 1887.] 
( Continued from page SOS.) 
If we require proof of a general and widespread feeling that it is 
possible to do better than cling to the muck cart, I have only to point 
to the experimental work going on all over the country ; of the owners 
of large estates who are promoting such experiments—all by liberal 
subscriptions ; and many who are having them tried on their own pro¬ 
perty. I may mention Sir Thomas Acland, the Duke of Norfolk, the 
Duke of Richmond, Lord Sheffield, Sir Spencer Wilson, the Marquis of 
Huntley, Major Sergisson, Lord Brassey, Mr. Faunce de Laune, Lord 
Cranbrook. the Duke of Devonshire, Lord Leconlield, and Lord 
Winterton. Of the action of farmers in this matter, I may mention the 
West Norfolk Farmers’ Manure Company, composed entirely of practical 
farmers, with the exception of Mr. Thomas Brown, the very able 
chemist of the company, to whom, personally, I am indebted for many 
useful practical hints in the application of manures. Then, too, in 
Essex, we have an association under the guidance of Professor D^er; 
in Sussex in the south, and Aberdeenshire in the north, there are 
associations under the very able management of Professor Jamieson, and 
we are all familiar with important woik of Sir John Lawes and 
Dr. Yoelcker. 
Of practical results I have such a mass of information ready to my 
hands that it is impossible to include much of it in such a paper as this. 
I must, however, invite special attention to the result of Mr. F. J. 
Cooke’s Barley experiments at Flitcham Abbey, in Norfolk, last year. 
Upon one plot he used 3 cwt. of nitrate of soda and 3 cwt. of super¬ 
phosphate per acre ; upon the other plot he used the same quantity of 
nitrate of soda and superphosphate, with the addition of 2 cwt. of 
muriate of potash, and by an expenditure of 16s. for the potash he 
obtained 45 bushels more marketable corn per acre than he had upon 
the plot where no potash was used. This one fact will suffice to show 
what goocj work is being done in Norfolk. It has gone on this year upon 
the farms of Mr. Cooke at Flitcham ; Mr. Sapwell at Aylsham ; and 
Mr. Garrett Tayler at Whitlingham. It was my privilege to meet 
those gentlemen with Mr. Clare Sewell Read at Whitlingham experi¬ 
mental field on the 30th of last July, and what I saw then enables me 
to say that the forthcoming report will contain much useful information 
derived from the extensive and very thorough trials of different manures 
upon corn, roots, and pasture. 
An account of the great work done by Professor Jamieson in Aberdeen¬ 
shire and Sussex during the last eleven or twelve years would of itself 
afford useful matter for discussion for several evenings, and I must 
therefore avoid any attempt to give anything like a full statement of it 
now. But I am personally so greatly indebted to Professor Jamieson, 
and the results achieved by him have such a high national importance, 
that I must beg your forbearance while I give a slight sketch of what 
has been done in Sussex. The Sussex Association for the Improvement 
of Agriculture owes its origin to Major Sergison of Cuckfield Park. I 
have heard him tell how during a visit to Aberdeenshire in 1880 he was 
so much impressed by the importance of the results of the experiments 
which had then been carried on for five years by the Aberdeenshire 
Agricultural Association under the guidance of Professor Jamieson, that 
upon returning to the south he gave an account of what he had seen in 
some letters to the newspapers, the result being a meeting of agri¬ 
culturists at Brighton, and the formation of the Sussex Association with 
an annual income from voluntary subscriptions of from £500 to £700, 
and with Professor Jamieson as chemist to the Association. 
From the outset Professor Jamieson stated he came to teach no new 
thing; the sum and substance of his doctrine was common sense 
applied to chemistry in its relation to agriculture. In point of fact, his 
aim was to induce farmers to see for themselves which were the most 
•efficacious and most economical forms of manures ; to understand the 
nature of the soil they had so long essayed to cultivate, and to learn 
how to face the depression of agriculture with a full hand, by getting 
more out of the land than they had ever done before. The entire work 
was emphatically educational, but he had special “ Educational Plots” 
where was shown a method of analysing the soil by a process of partial 
manuring, in a systematic manner, by means of which farmers were 
taught how to obtain exact information of the state of thi soil by 
making the soil analyse itself as it were. I shall be happy to explain 
the details of this work at some future meeting, and it must suffice 
now to say that the great practical outcome of the trials upon the 
Educational Plots was that the only manurial constituents to which 
farmers need give attention are nitrogen, potash and phosphorus. A 
farmer therefore only had to make himself acquainted with the forms 
in which they could be got, ascertain the composition, and state of 
division, and the price, and the work was reduced to simple calculation, 
which any farmer could accomplish. 
In every report—at every meeting—farmers have been urged not to 
use any manure merchants’ mixture, but to procure each sort of manure 
separately, and to have them mixed under careful supervision at the 
farm. To assist them so far as was possible in this important operation, 
an annual manure recommendation circular has been issued, wherein 
the name and quantity of the most suitable manures for grass, corn, and 
root crops were given. This circular has become more valuable every 
year. This year it was published in February, and in addition to exact 
quantities of each sort of manure for each crop, the characters and 
descriptions of the manures were given, with the market prices in bags 
free on rail in London, andithe cash price of the mixtures per acre, as 
follows :— 
£ s. d. 
Grass mixture, about . 10 0 
Wheat mixture, about. Ill 0 
Oat and Barley mixture, about. 1 3 6 
Swede and Mangold mixture, about. 2 3 0 
Fourteen tons of farmyard manure were to be used for roots in 
addition to the chemical manure, which would bring the amount per 
acre for roots to nearly £5. If that amount is condemned as excessive, 
I would point to a paragraph in the Land Agents' Record of 
November 12th, where we are told that Mr. S. Sherwood took the first 
prize at the Framlingham Farmers’ Club in the previous week, for the 
best 3 acres of Mangolds, the manure for which cost £6 10s. per acre, 
and the crops weighed 45 tons per acre. I suppose nobody will question 
the editor’s remark, that the result wholly justified the expenditure. 
I have thus, in a very cursory manner, striven to show something of 
the great work now being done to enable British farmers to overcome 
difficulties which, under the heavy cloud of depression that is now 
hanging over us, would, without special effort on our part, prove in¬ 
superable. If aid from without in any form can be had. grateful indeed 
shali we be for it. Meanwhile, let us exert ourselves to do all we can to 
secure help from within, to foster a spirit of self-help and manly in¬ 
dependence, to show that our section of the community has its full 
share of the national trait of never knowing when we are beaten. We 
are engaged in a contest in which our very existence as farmers is at 
stake, and our efforts are handicapped by our farm produce being 
placed in competition with similar produce imported from the best 
markets in the world, by keen speculators ever on the watch to glut our 
markets with foreign corn and cattle when they are certain of a margin 
of profit upon their investments. If, therefore, it is possible by im¬ 
proved methods of culture to obtain better crops in a more economical 
manner than has hitherto obtained among us, I venture to hope that I 
have your approval of my efforts to help so good a cause this evening. 
The Live Stock Journal Almanac, 1888. —We have received a 
copy of this publication, and conceive it to be of great use to farmers 
and others who are interested in stock of various kinds, also in poultry, 
ducks, and pigeons. It is a comprehensive work of nearly 250 pages, 
including a breeders’ directory. Special articles from leading autho¬ 
rities on the subjects treated form a prominent feature, and the work 
is copiously illustrated. It is published at 9, New Bridge Street, Ludgate 
Circus, London. 
OUR LETTER BOX. 
Potatoes for Cows (An Inquirer ).—Raw Potatoes are neither a palat¬ 
able nor nutritious article of diet for cows, and we a'together object to using 
them in such a manner. Cooked, crushed, and with enough salt mixed with 
the mass to render it palatable, it forms a tolerably nutritious article of diet, 
but its effect upon a cow would not be a ma’erial increase in the milk 
supply, and the advantage of its use for such a purpose could hardly be 
commensurate with the labour in itB preparation. We do not recommend 
it. Your selection of feeding stuffs has certainly the charactexi-tic of 
novelty, damaged flour being ai uucommon in cow dietary as raw Pota¬ 
toes. Try about 4 lbs., mixed with an equal quantity of bran daily. If 
the mixture is not taken freely by the cows, mixed with minced Carrots 
and sweet chaff would ensure its consumption, provid. d the flour is not 
mouldy and sour. If the flour is really sweet and wholesome, its tendency 
might be to eDrich the milk and assist the system in keeping up a full 
flow, but it is hardly calculated to increase it. 
METEOROLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS. 
CAMDEN SQUARE, LONDON. 
Lat. 51° 32-40" N.; L»g. 0° 8' 0" W.; Altitude, 111 feet. 
DATE. ! 9 A.M. j IN THE DAY. 
1887. 
2 — 
Hygrome¬ 
ter. 
Direction 
of Wind. 
Temp, of 
soil at 
1 foot. 
Shade Tem¬ 
perature. 
Radiation 
Temperature. 
a 
*5 
« 
December. 
Dry. 
Wet. 
Max. 
Min. 
In 
snn. 
On 
grass 
Sunday . 
4 
Inches. 
29.873 
deg. 
438 
deg. 
42.0 
s.w. 
deg. 
42 2 
deg. 
47.2 
deg. 
43.2 
deg. 
50.7 
deg. 
41.7 
In. 
0.124 
Monday. 
5 
29.993 
36.5 
35.6 
N.W. 
42 4 
43 2 
356 
63.8 
31.2 
Tuesday .... 
6 
29.598 
40.8 
38.1 
S. 
41.2 
44.L 
35.4 
50.3 
28.9 
0.027 
Wednesday.. 
7 
29.681 
337 
32.2 
S.W. 
40.3 
394 
31.9 
63.3 
26.7 
0.04 L 
Thursday.... 
8 
29.761 
38.4 
38.0 
BE. 
39.3 
53.8 
33.1 
54.5 
28.2 
0.262 
Friday . 
9 
29.419 
48.6 
446 
W. 
40.8 
51.6 
37 9 
74.7 
37.3 
0.014 
Saturday .... 
10 
29.885 
38.9 
35.1 
N.E. 
41.4 
4-.2 
38.1 
47.6 
31.3 
29.745 
40.1 
37.9 
41.1 
45 9 
36.5 
57.8 
82.2 
0.468 
REMARKS. 
4th.—Fine, but cloudy throughout, with slight Bhowers in the evening. 
6th.—Cloudy early; bright day. 
6th.—Overcast morning; squally, with Bhowers from noon to 2 P.M.; then sunshine, 
followed by variable weather. 
7th.—Fine and bright early; clouded about noon; a few flakes of wet snow about 1 P.V 
then variable. 
8th —Wet all day. 
9th.—Fine and pleasant, and generally bright. 
lotn.—Fair early ; Blight snow showers from 10 AM. to noon ; cloudy afternoon. 
A variable but on the whole seasonable week. Temperature about below that of 
the preceding week, and almost exactly the average.— Q. J. SIMONS. 
