100 
FOREIGN AGRICULTURAL NEWS. 
FOREIGN AGRICULTURAL NEWS. 
By the arrival of the English steamers we are in re¬ 
ceipt of our foreign journals up to the 22d of January. 
Markets.— - Ashes in good demand. Cotton a de¬ 
cline of §d. per lb. Flour Grain in fair request at 
a very slight advance. JYavai Stores brisk. Pro¬ 
visions no change. 
Money very abundant, good paper could be dis¬ 
counted at 3 to 4 per cent. 
Caution in Applying Salt to Fruit Trees. —Com¬ 
mon salt may be scattered on the surface of the ground 
at the rate of 300 lbs. per acre, with perfect safety, so 
far as vegetables are concerned; but it is a dangerous 
substance to apply to fruit trees.— Gard. Chronicle. 
Grafting Vines. —The best time to graft the grape 
vine is not when the sap begins to rise, for this is of 
all periods the most, improper. Let the vines break 
into leaf, and then you may graft either on the old or 
young wood with every chance of success.— Ibid. 
How to Prevent the Burning of Chimneys. —Fires 
in chimneys in France have recently been prevented 
by placing three frames of wire work one foot above 
each other, near the base of the chimney ; no flame 
will pass them. 
Human Bones Used as Manure. —Millions of human 
bones, mixed with those of horses, mules, &c., col¬ 
lected at Leipsic, Austerlitz, Jena, Waterloo, and 
other battle fields, have been imported into Hull, from 
the continent, and, after being ground to dust, used to 
manure the fields of Yorkshire. So much for glory ! 
Fresh Manure not Good for the Vine. —In all wine 
countries, where we may suppose the culture of the 
vine to be best understood, the opinion universally 
prevails that fresh manure ought not to be used, or if 
it be so, that it should be applied in the autumn after 
the vintage, so a3 to be in a great measure decom¬ 
posed, and incorporated with the soil before the as¬ 
cent of the sap in the spring. This practice is occa¬ 
sionally followed in the Rhinegau, where a strong 
prepossession exists in favor of manuring the vine¬ 
yards, and where small quantities of litter are spread 
around the roots of the vines; but the best authors 
concur in recommending that all the manure em¬ 
ployed should be first duly fermented, at whatever 
time it may be used. 
The vine dressers of France generally object to 
manure altogether. The poet Virgil, however, re¬ 
commends it in some lines which should be committed 
to memory by all who grow the vine:— 
u Next; when you layers in your vineyard make, 
Mix some rich duns, and shells and pebbles break, 
Spread the good soil with lib’ral hand around, 
And trench them deeply in the lighten’d ground ; 
Superfluous moisture thus glides through the earth, 
And heaithy vapors aid the tender birth. ” 
These are wise maxims, and no modern discovery 
is at variance with them. 
East India Guano. —At a late meeting of the 
Highland Society at Edinburgh, Professor Low pre¬ 
sented to the meeting three specimens of guano from 
Malacca and the neighboring islands. The first speci¬ 
men, No. 1, consisted of the excrements of the larger 
frugivorous bats, which frequent in enormous num¬ 
bers the rocky caverns of the coasts. It is regarded 
by the natives as inferior, for the purposes of manure, 
to the other kinds. No. 2, consisted chiefly, of the 
excrements of the smaller bats which feed on insects, 
and is mixed with the former in the same caverns 
It is greatly more valued than the first kind for the 
purposes of manure. No. 3, consisted chiefly of the 
dung of insectivorous birds, apparently of the swallow 
kinds, and is more valued by the natives than any of 
the others. The Professor mentioned that these sub¬ 
stances have been employed as manure by the Chinese 
and other inhabitants of the countries which produce 
them, from the remotest times. They are used for 
any kind of plants, but the most common application 
of them is to the rice, or paddy fields. A hole being 
made in the ground, a small quantity of the guano is 
deposited, and then the seeds. It is of practical im¬ 
portance that the distinction between the different 
kinds should be known to the importers of eastern 
guano. The first kind only, namely, that of the larger 
bats, has as yet been brought in quantity into England ; 
and having been found inferior to the guano of the Pe¬ 
ruvian and African coasts, the eastern guanos have 
been regarded as of inferior quality, and tiie importa¬ 
tion had accordingly been discontinued. But the 
second and third kinds will probably be found not infe¬ 
rior to the sorts now in use, and may be procured, 
especially the second kind, or that of the insectivo¬ 
rous bats, in most abundance from the coasts of Ma¬ 
lacca, Cochin-China, and several of the islands of the- 
Eastern Archipelago. 
Subsoiling. —Mr. Pusey, in a paper read before the- 
English Agricultural Society, gives the following in¬ 
teresting account of the mode adopted, in the Flemish 
husbandry, of bringing up the subsoil, and gradually 
deepening the staple:—They dig trenches, about a 
foot deep, over the field, from the bottom of which, 
assuming the soil to be 10 inches deep, they have 
therfore dug up two inches of subsoil, and as they 
proceed they fling the whole over each land, on which 
the seed has been previously sown, which they thus 
cover. The trench being shifted sideways each year, 
and the same process renewed, at the end of a certain 
number of years, two inches of the whole subsoil will 
have been mixed with the upper surface, and the soil 
deepened by that amount. The same process is then 
repeated, two inches deeper. In this way, after four 
or five courses of trenching, the soil is brought to a 
depth of 18 or 20 inches of uniform quality.— Journ. 
Royal Ag. Society. 
Manure for Wheat. —Mr. Way, consulting chemist 
of the Royal Agricultural Society of England, has 
analysed about fifty specimens of different sorts of 
wheat, and has come to the conclusion that an average 
crop of wheat takes out of the land the following inor¬ 
ganic substances:— 
6 lbs. of magnesia 
1 lb. of peroxide of iron 
23 lbs. of potash 
li lb. of soda. 
84 lbs. of silica 
20 lbs. of phosphoric acid 
4 lbs. of sulphuric acid 
8 lbs. of lime 
It will be seen, that the most important ingredients 
of wheat are phosphoric acid, and the alkalies, potash 
and soda. If these were returned to the land in suffi¬ 
cient quantity, the minor mineral ingredients, such 
as silica, lime, magnesia, iron, &c., would in the 
greater number of cases be supplied by the soil. The 
phosphoric acid would be most conveniently returned 
in bone dust, which contains from 50 to 60 per cent, 
of the phosphates. The alkalies might be supplied 
singly in the shape of nitrate of soda or nitrate of 
potash (saltpetre). Guano is valuable, inasmuch as it 
comprises not only a large proportion of phosphates, 
and alkalies, but also what is of great importance,i 
particularly to the young plant, a considerable portion 
of ammonia. The principal organic substances he 
found to be carbonic acid and nitrogen, both of which 
exists in the air; but it is from the ammonia of decay¬ 
ing animal and vegetable substances that plants derive 
their principal supply of nitrogen, ammonia being 
composed of nitrogen and hydrogen. When a plant is 
burned, the organic portions fly off into the air, whilst 
the ashes comprise the mineral or inorganic ingredi¬ 
ents. Ammonia was essential to the growth of wheat* 
S and his might be supplied to lands which abound 
I in all the mineral ingredients, in the shape of sul- 
' phate of ammonia, which might be manufactured 
J from the liquor obtained from the gas works of every 
town .—Ibid 
