392 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
[ May 18, 1886, 
losses, besides the subsequent heavy labour of removal and 
distribution with men, horses, and carts. Do not the 
numerous experiments with chemical manures by the Royal 
Agricultural Society and other associations all point to a 
recognition of the common want of portable, cheap, efficient 
fertilisers ? Yet efforts to ascertain and to show unmistake- 
ably which are the best manures for our purpose meet with 
opposition both active and passive—active from interested 
dealers in special manure mixtures, and—strange to say— 
passive from very many of the class they are specially 
intended to benefit—the farmers. This is a matter to 
which, however, success is quite certain to attract attention 
and respect, and eventually to obtain full and ample recog¬ 
nition. Let those who lag behind and clog the wheels of 
useful progress learn as they must do how unmistakeably 
they are being left behind in the race, and they will, simply 
because they must, bow to the inevitable, and adopt the ways 
and means so generously placed at their disposal by those 
whom they once regarded with suspicion and doubt. 
The soil as a medium for convoying food to plants, and 
as a substance in which the roots of plants grow, spread, and 
cling to, must have more thoughtful intelligent attention. 
The nonsensical notion that soil requires periodical seasons 
of rest must be got rid of as being altogether fallacious. 
There must be no more long fallows in the ordinary course 
of farming ; there never has been any good reason for them 
excepting only after two or three consecutive wet summers. 
We have only to keep down weeds, to keep the soil open and 
well broken up, to keep it well stored with fertility, and we 
may go on cropping year after year without giving heed to 
four-course shift or other local methods of crop rotation. 
But there must be no fitful haphazard work; our aim must 
be steady, our purpose sure. We must keep the soil clean as 
a garden; we must relieve “ wet ” land by drainage; we 
must apply manure to it every year. Instead of bringing the 
soil to the verge of exhaustion by over-cropping we should so 
sustain its high condition that each crop may be as full and 
abundant as is possible. Mark the term; dwell upon it, 
reader. Ask yourself if you really know how much increase 
the land may be made to yield. Is it the language of 
enthusiasm which tells us of eight or ten quarters of Wheat 
per acre ? of twelve quarters of Oats being gathered off the 
same area of land ? of twenty or thirty tons of Potatoes ? of 
fifty to seventy tons of Mangold ? A few days ago we called 
on a tenant who holds a small farm of only ninety acres, and 
we found him busily engaged in preparation for sowing 
Mangolds. The furrows were ready, and farmyard manure 
was being carted and spread in them, but the farmer 
could only afford one-fourth the quantity which we know to 
be necessary with an addition of 6 cwt. per acre of chemical 
manures. He, however, had no such manures, nor had he 
means to procure any. The result will be strictly propor¬ 
tionate—a meagre crop of small roots of little value for any 
purpose. How are we to decide between such a tenant and 
his landlord ? Such a man feels the pinch of hard times 
severely. He comes to us for relief by a reduction of rent. 
In point of fact, he had a reduction some eighteen months 
ago, and he asked for another last Michaelmas. If he had 
the land almost rent free he would do very little good with 
it. Clearly such a man ought never to have had the farm. 
To turn him out now seems hard, but is it fair upon the 
landlord that he should have to suffer for the incompetence 
of an ignorant tenant ? Suffer loss he must whatever is 
done, for if the tenant leaves and the farm is taken in hand, 
it is so exhausted that it will be a work of years to reclaim 
it and bring it into really high condition. Yet if the tenant 
remains he can do no good, and he will be always on the 
verge of bankruptcy. 
It was advisedly that the soil was mentioned as a medium 
for conveying food to plants, for it ought never to be for¬ 
gotten how largely plant-growth depends upon air, rain, and 
solar heat. Puny indeed are our best efforts in comparison 
to the gigantic operations of Nature, and every farmer ought 
to know enough of what occurs in the economy of Nature to 
regulate his own work thereby. Then will the full value of 
green crops as a means of imparting fertility to the land be 
understood, and the culture of such crops will become 
general. This is a point of immense importance for the- 
future, for the sowing and ploughing-in of such catch crops 
as White Mustard should form part of the process of 
reclaiming land that is both foul and poor. Clean the land 
in autumn if possible, but at the latest as early in spring as 
the weather admits of. Sow it with White Mustard 20 lbs. 
of seed per acre, give the Mustard a dressing of a hundred¬ 
weight per acre of nitrate of soda, plough in the crop when 
the seed pods are visible, and you will impart a rich store of 
fertility to the soil. 
(To be continued.) 
WORK ON THE HOME FARM. 
With the dry weather corn-hoeing has been well done, and we now- 
hope to see much less Charlock this summer. In some fields weeds were 
so scarce that some of the men were set forking out conch grass upon 
foul land ; the use of forks and hand-picking for this work has to be 
resorted to wherever the grass has spread into thick beds, in order to 
eradicate it ; the horse hoe, or whatever similar implement is most in 
local favour, being afterwards passed up and down and across the field, 
followed by harrows as many times as is found to be necessary. Some¬ 
times a Cambridge roller is useful to crush the soil and to enable the 
harrows to pull out the twitch. Let all possible pains be taken with such 
work now, and as soon as the soil is as clean as we can render it by such 
means, sow it with whatever crop is considered most desirable. If it is- 
very poor we cannot do better than sow Mustard for folding or ploughing 
in ; if for permanent pasture we must take especial care to have the soil 
so well stirred and broken up as to make a fine deep seed bed. Folding 
of the breeding flock upon Rye is almost finished; the ploughs followed 
the folding as closely as possible, and harrows were used at once after the 
ploughs to break up the soil before it became hardened by exposure, our 
object being to sow Swedes there as soon as we can. 
Stone and wood picking followed by the bush barrows and rollers has 
left the grass land in good order for the hay crop. Our most forward 
meadow is a large one upon the whole, of which old sheep were fattened 
in folds last autumn. The strong rich growth of herbage now affords 
pleasing evidence of the beneficial effects of the sheep-folding. The 
principal Grass in this meadow is Cocksfoot, and it certainly affords a 
greater bulk of hay and a more abundant aftermath than any other 
meadow we have. Sharp frost at the beginning of the month cut off 
some of the early growth of Clover, and gave a severe check to spring 
corn, especially Barley. We have a large field of Pacey’s Perennial Rye 
Grass at an off farm, for which manure could not be spared, about which, 
we found the bailiff somewhat puzzled- An inspection showed that the 
land requires draining, and we have decided to have the grass eaten off, 
to put in drains, to pare and burn the surface in July or August, then to 
break up the soil and sow Winter Oats in September with our usual half¬ 
dressing of home-mixed manures. Another half-dressiDg will be given 
early in the following spring, and we shall then confidently expect a 
profitable crop upon what is now the poorest field of the farm. Many 
farm buildings are now being put in repair, but none of the work is of an 
expensive nature. It consists rather of such things as broken tiles, 
plaster, fences, doors, and windows ; walls with a few bricks loosened, 
broken gates, feeding cribs, and such things. Paint and tar will be used 
for all bare woodwork, both to protect the property and to give it a neat 
and finished appearance. 
METEOROLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS. 
CAMDEN SQUARE, LONDON. 
Lat. 6I°32'40 'N.; Long. 0° 8' 0" W.; Altitude, 111 feet. 
DATE. 
9 A.M. 
IN THE DAY. 
1886. 
Barome¬ 
ter at 328 
and Sea 
Level 
Hygrome¬ 
ter. 
fl . 
0-0 
S a 
or 
I Temp, of 
Soil at 
I 1 foot. 
Shade Tem¬ 
perature. 
Radiation 
Temperature. 
P 
a 
Pi 
May. 
Dry. 
Wet. 
5o 
Max. 
Min. 
In 
sun. 
On 
grass. 
Sunday . 
2 
Inches. 
30.401 
deg. 
47.6 
deg. 
41.5 
E. 
deg. 
47.4 
deg. 
55.8 
deg. 
32.6 
depr. 
94.7 
deg. 
25.2 
In. 
Monday. 
3 
30.429 
51.2 
43.8 
S.E. 
47-2 
63.9 
37.0 
102.7 
28.8 
— 
Tuesday. 
4 
3 '.445 
49.9 
44.8 
E. 
48.0 
66.9 
35.2 
100.6 
26.4 
— 
Wednesday .. 
5 
30.497 
52.7 
46.3 
N.E. 
48.4 
70.2 
36.9 
102.7 
29.1 
— 
Thursday .... 
G 
30.359 
61.4 
48.7 
N. 
48.8 
74.7 
43.7 
108.4 
35.3 
— 
Friday. 
7 
80.212 
63.6 
51.8 
N.W. 
49.5 
75.3 
44.8 
108.1 
36.9 
— 
Saturday .... 
8 
30.063 
62.8 
54.1 
2S.W. 
51.8 
694 
52.7 
88.1 
46.8 
— 
30.841 
55.6 
47.3 
4S.7 
68.0 
40.4 
100.8 
32.6 
— 
REMARKS. 
2nd.—A glorious spring day, with cool E. wind. 
3rd.—Fine and pleasant. 
4th.—Hazy till 10 a.ji. ; fine, bright, and warm after. 
5th.—Hazy in first part of morning ; fine and warm after. 
6th.—Fine summer’s day. 
7th.—Fine, but not bright. 
8th.—Overcast all day. 
A very fine, dry, and warm week.—G. J. Symons. 
