576 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
[ December 19, 1867. 
■Oxford men were, of course, perfectly certain of the 
soundness of a decision which gives the post of honour to 
the sheep of their county. We are certainly of opinion 
that for champion prizes to be really useful they should 
-only embrace special classes, and among sheep the 
Downs and Longwools ought certainly to be kept separate 
in such a competition. We have had practical experience 
of the high value of judicious cross-breeding among all 
animals of the farm, and we should much like to s ee 
special recognition of really useful classes of cross¬ 
breeds. 
Practical utility before fancy, say we, and that prin¬ 
ciple should be the leading one at our cattle shows. It is 
undoubtedly gaining ground, for hard times have led to 
the practice of rigid economy even in breeding of prize 
animals. Does it pay? is the question which every 
cattle breeder has to ask himself now, and the answer is 
not unfrequently the reverse of satisfactory. Feeding 
stuffs are all very cheap now, and so long as they are 
nutritious we hold with a liberal use of them in the right 
way. This is to feed well from the outset, and never to 
suffer any animal kept for profit to fall off in condition, 
for that means a loss of money in the end. Early 
maturity is now a certainty if only the animal be both 
well bred and well fed. 
WORK ON THE HOME FARM. 
Hardly any of what may be termed extra winter work is now done 
upon many farms, for as soon as harvest work is ended there is a 
reduction of labour, extra hands being easily available for corn-thresh¬ 
ing. The sound of the flails on the barn floor is now almost entirely a 
•thing of the past, yet we do know one worthy yeoman farmer who 
keeps his barns filled with corn sheaves in reserve for winter hand¬ 
threshing. The men thresh and clean it for about Is. 8d. per quarter, 
■and the master says the cost is not greater than if the work was done 
by steam ; he is thus able to retain the services of a given number of men 
throughout the year, and avoids taking on a number of strange hands 
for special work. It would be well if all seed corn, at any rate, were 
hand-threshed, for so little care is taken to clean out the threshing 
drum after each sort of corn is finished that it has really become a 
difficult matter to procure pure samples of seed. The great seed firms 
are fully aware of this, and their offers of pure seed corn command an 
•amount of attention from farmers which in these hard times is 
absolutely marvellous. To give 10s. or 12s. a bushel now for seed corn 
•would appear an absolute absurdity, yet it is done, and we are 
assured there is an extensive trade in such samples. We entirely agree, 
however, in the wisdom of growing only the best sorts of corn, but the 
difficulty is to know which are the best for our particular soil. It 
certainly does not answer to depend upon what may be termed show 
.samples, for they are frequently the outcome of special culture that is 
hardly within the scope of an ordinary farmer. The really safe course 
to follow in the selection of seed is to buy improved samples of well- 
ffinown sorts, and not hastily turn to novelties which may or may not 
be worth having. Giant Wheat soon becomes dwarfed in poor soil, and 
the yield is then altogether inferior to that of an ordinary sort. A 
little common sense brought to bear upon this matter will keep a man 
from going far wrong in it. Never let it be forgotten that our practice 
•requires balance, and that to give an extravagant price for seed com to 
be sown upon poor, wet, or foul land never answers. First of all make 
sure that the condition of the land is sound and fertile, and then the 
seed cannot be too good for it. It is as much worth while doing all we 
■can towards good cultivation as it ever was, and it is just those farmers 
who have kept up the condition of the land who are best able to face 
hard times. 
UNITS OF VALUE IN MANURE. 
Morton's Almanack for Farmers and Landowners,* is a valuable 
publication, many subjects of importance being treated in its pages by 
recognised authorities. As an example we cite the following contri¬ 
bution by Mr. F. J. Lloyd, F.C.S., Consulting Chemist to the British 
Hairy Farmers’ Association, which will be interesting to many culti¬ 
vators, both on the farm and in the garden :— 
“ The value of a manure to the farmer depends upon its ingredients 
and the use to which he may apply it; but the price of that manure 
•depends upon the demand and supply of the substances containing those 
ingredients. Thus guano, being difficult to obtain, as the supply is 
becoming limited, while the demand for it does not diminish, fetches in 
the market a high price, and if the farmer would buy the substances 
contained in guano in some other forms, he might obtain them for much 
less than by buying them as guano. But this assumes that the sub- 
* Vinton & Co., Hampstead Road, London. 
stances can be bought in other forms to possess all the qualities of those 
substances as present in guano. Now this has not been proved, and 
indeed all the evidence goes to show that phosphoric acid in one form 
and phosphoric acid in another form have very different values for the 
farmer’s land and crops—that nitrogen in one form may be most valu¬ 
able, in another form most useless. It will be seen, then, that in valuing 
manures by units very great errors may be made unless the form in 
which the constituents exist is known as well as their quantity. It is 
in his ability to estimate the form, quite as much as in estimating 
the quantities of the ingredients, that the value of the analyst lies. 
“ The principal constituents which we shall find in manures will 
be 
" Phosphoric acid as soluble phosphates, as in superphosphates. 
“ Phosphoric acid as insoluble phosphates, as in mineral phosphates. 
“ Phosphoric acid as precipitated or retrograde phosphates, as in 
precipitated phosphate. 
“ Potash, as chloride and sulphate, as in kainit. 
“ Nitrogen, as ammonia salts and nitrates easily soluble, as in ammonia 
sulphate or sodium nitrate. 
“ Nitrogen as organic compounds easily decomposed, as in blood. 
“ Nitrogen as organic compounds slowly decomposed, as in shoddy. 
“ By taking in the Agricultural Gazette, or any leading paper, the 
farmer may see the quoted prices of the compounds which contain these 
substances, and from these quotations he may calculate the unit values 
of the above constituents for that week. 
“For example, we may find the quotation of superphosphate, 25 per 
cent, soluble, is £3 a ton. Convert the price of the manure into 
shillings, and divide by the per-centage of constituent present, 
thus :— 
£3 
20 
25 ) 60 ( 2s. 5(L 
Or 2s. 5d. is the unit value of the soluble phosphate in that manure 
Take as another example sulphate of ammonia, 24 per cent, of ammonia 
price £13 10s. per ton. Convert the price into shillings, divide by per¬ 
centage, and we have the unit value (price is the more correct term) of 
the ammonia. 
£13 10s. 
20 
24) 270 (Us. 3d. 
Or 11s. 3d. is the unit price of ammonia in the sulphate of ammonia, at 
the price quoted. 
“ By reversing the process we thus compute the value of a compound 
manure. Thus a manure is offered the same week at £6 a ton, said to 
contain 30 per cent, soluble phosphate and 3 per cent ammonia. If we 
know how the ammonia exists, and that it is present as sulphate, our 
calculation of the fair market price would be as follows :— 
“ Thirty per cent, of soluble phosphate at 2s. 5d. per unit. Multiply 
2s. 5d. by 30 gives the value in shillings of the soluble phosphate. 
“ Again, 3 per cent, ammonia at Us. 3d. per unit. Multiply Us. 3d. 
by 3, and this gives the value of the ammonia ; add the two together, 
and we obtain the value of the manure at the prices here assumed as 
quoted. 
Thus: 2s. 5d. x 30 = 72s. 6d. 
And Us. 3d. x 3 = 33s. 9d. 
106s. 3d. 
or £5 6s. 3d.; therefore the manure is too dear at £6 a ton. 
“ Such is the method of discovering and utilising the unit values of 
the constituents in manure, the chief difficulty being, as before stated, 
to know the form in which the constituents exist.” 
METEOROLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS. 
CAMDEN SQUARE, LONDON. 
Lat. 61° 82' 40" N.; Long. 0° 8' 0" W.; Altitude, 111 feet. 
DATE. 
9 A.M. 
IN THE DAY. 
2_! 
Hygrome- 
Shade Tem- 
Radiation 
a 
1887. 
is®? 
• ter. 
♦3 a 
til 
perature. 
Temperature. 
Cj 
« 
December. 
In 
On 
pa 2 os 
Dry. 
Wet. 
Q 1 © 
H 
Max. 
Min. 
sun. 
grass 
Inches. 
deg 
deg. 
deg. 
deg. 
deg. 
deg. 
deg. 
In. 
Sunday . 
18 
29.798 
35 7 
34.0 
S. 
40.8 
43 9 
34.4 
55.8 
27.6 
0.069 
Monday. 
19 
29.536 
326 
30 2 
W. 
39.8 
37.1 
30.9 
47.2 
25.9 
_ 
Tuesda’y .... 
20 
29.543 
33.2 
32.4 
w. 
38.8 
369 
28.7 
38.2 
25.1 
0.013 
Wednesday.. 
21 
19.658 
33.4 
32.8 
N.W. 
382 
35.9 
31.2 
41.1 
28.5 
Thursday.... 
22 
29.967 
32.5 
32.1 
N. 
38 2 
33.3 
31.8 
37.8 
28.1 
_ 
Friday . 
23 
29.989 
32.0 
32.0 
K.W. 
37.8 
40.8 
28.5 
44.9 
25.9 
0.023 
Saturday .... 
24 
29.890 
39.9 
381 
87.5 
4L2 
31.4 
47.8 
27J 
29.769 
34.2 
33.1 
I 38.7 
38.4 
31.0 
44.7 
26.9 
oao5 
REMARKS. 
18th.—Beautiful morning, cloudy afternoon ; rain 4.S0 to 6 P.M., showers after. 
19th,—Morning fine and bright, dull afternoon; drizzle after sunset. 
20th.—overcast, and at times damp; rain, with flakes of snow at 3J.5 r.M. 
21st.—Cloudy, hut dry. 
22nd.—Fine, but no sunshine. 
23rd.—Slight fog early, flue and bright afterwards. 
24th.—Kain in early morning, fine thioughout; tine moonlight night. 
A tolerably fine week, much cooler than the previous one, and rather below the 
average.—U. I. SYMONS. 
