K-Q 
NEW YORK, OCT. 8, 1881 
[Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1381, by the Rural New-Yorker. In the office of the Librarian of Congress 
at Washington.] 
and in several other agricultural papers, as 
well as in some official Government Reports, 
and elsewhere. For some years past there 
have been annually published memoranda 
of the origin, plan and results of the field and 
other experiments of Drs. Lawes and Gilbert, 
and in the issue for 1880 is given a list of 39 
lengthy papers on field experiments, vegeta¬ 
tion, etc., by both, one paper by Ur. Gilbert 
and Dr. Masters, and four papers, “ On the Oc¬ 
currence of Fairy Rings,” “On Some Points in 
Connection with Vegetation,” “ On Rainfall, 
Evaporation and Percolation,” and “ On the 
Composition of Potatoes,” by Dr. Gilbert 
alone. The experiments on feeding animals, 
and sewage illustrations, etc,, comprise 30 
papers by Dr. Lawes and Dr. Gilliert, and four 
papers by Dr. Gilbert alone. 
In 1800 Dr. Gilbert was elected a Fellow of 
the Royal Society, and in 1807 the Coun¬ 
cil of the Society showed its appreciation of 
his work by awarding him, in conjmiction 
in the broad field of agricultural research, or, 
indeed, any society or association of workers 
in that field, to whom agricultural progress 
owes so much as it does to Dr. Gilbert and Dr. 
Lawes, whose honored names are inseparably 
associated in the grateful remembrance of 
agriculturists throughout the civilized world. 
Whether it were wiser to have sown as we 
have done or to have waited, as other farm- 
el’s are doing, for rain is a question which the 
weather of the next ten days will answer. The 
wheats sown in this field were: first, Oregon 
which, because of its hardiness, its large ker¬ 
nel and the strength of its straw, has been se¬ 
lected as one of the wheats which we shall 
continue to sow; second, Fultzo-Clawson of 
which our readers are likely to hear enough 
in the course of the next two or three years; 
third, Shumaker; fourth. Silver Chaff, and 
finally, Fultz which, for Long Island farmers 
promises to become as great a favorite as it 
is with our Western friends, as to yield at any 
rate, if not as to its flouring qualities. There 
is plenty of room for improvements in wheats, 
and it is our belief that ten years hence the 
kinds popular now will have had their day. 
Already oux* wheat planted nine by nine 
inches apart is up far enough to murk the 
squares. Rural reader's will remember that 
we experimented with the 
cultivation of wheat planted 
(by hand) a foot apart either 
way, several years ago. The 
results were not very decisive 
one way or the other, and 
so we shall now have the 
opportunity of testing the 
system upon a more extend¬ 
ed scale, should the season 
prove favorable and the 
dreaded Hessian fly not ap¬ 
pear in formidable numbers. 
Our experiment com field! 
Are not our readers interest- 
"rX- ed to know what has become 
-v-t of it? Lot them bear in mind 
*:Vv that the season of 1881 will 
gL. long be remembered by the 
farmers of this paid; of the 
country as the most disastrous 
to corn that has occurred 
during the past 13 years at 
least. There is nowhere more 
- ; y than half a crop. Upon many 
> farms, the com was close 
upon an entire failure. Our 
readers will bear in mind 
also that the soil of the ex- 
poriment field was very poor 
and except upon the fertilized 
' acre, our sole hopes of a large 
yield were based upon (1) the 
, varieties sown; (3) our peeu- 
liar system of cultivation and, 
last, though not least, upon 
a fitting of the land, Well, 
we are not yet ready to talk 
^ about this field, and the re- 
suits of the several experi- 
ments attempted, But they 
are very interesting to us and, 
we trust, will prove instruct- 
WilWJjJntK ive to those of our readers who 
cultivate this noblest of the 
creals of America. One 
- remark however we would 
WkW//'/ ■ make because it differs from 
Affix ' opinions we have often seen 
expressed. It is that all of 
our upland corn, whether in 
or out of the experiment field, 
which was manured either 
with farm manure or con¬ 
centrated fertilizers, was the 
first to suffer by the drought 
. and the first to uccumb. It 
seems natural enough that this 
should be so, since the more luxuriant the 
growth the greater is the noed of water to 
sustain it. 
Work of all kinds so presses upon us that it 
is diffic nit to do anything in a thorough man¬ 
ner and wo fed like quarreling with those ag¬ 
ricultural editors who at Such a time can se¬ 
renely talk of “forehaudedness”—“keeping 
OUR PORTRAIT GALLERY. 
Joseph Henry Gilbert, Ph. D., F. R. S, 
Joseph Henry Gilbert, whose 
name, in 
conjunction with that of Dr. J. B. Lawes, is 
familial- to all students of agricultural chem¬ 
istry, was bom at Hull, Yorkshire, August 1, 
1817. His father, the Rev. Joseph Gilbert., was 
the author of several theological works, and 
his mother, Ann Gilbert, who survived until 
1800, was also well known as an authoress, 
writing before her marriage under the 
name of Ann Taylor, of Ongar. During 
his school-days lie met with a gun-shot 
accident which greatly impaired his health 
for a considerable time und caused the 
loss ot the sight of one eye. His college 
courses were begun at the University of Glas¬ 
gow,and there,as elsewhere, he 
devoted special attention to 
chemistry, analytical and the¬ 
oretical, under the late Pro¬ 
fessor Thomas Thomson. He 
next studied at the University 
College, London, where he had 
the benefit of Professor Gra¬ 
ham’s able lectures, besides 
working iu the laboratory of 
the late Dr. Anthony Todd 
Thomson, then Professor of 
Materia Medica, Therapeutics 
and Toxology. To finish his 
course of chemical studies ho 
next visited Germany, and 
spent some time in the labora¬ 
tory of Liebig at Giessen, Y" 
where he took his degree of 
Doctor of Philosophy. Return- 
ing to University College, --48 
London, he became class and -'^81 
laboratory assistant to ! ’ro- 
fessor A. T. Thomson in the 
Winter and Hummer sessions 
of 1840—11, and at the same 
time-attended other courses at 
the college. On leaving the 
college, he devoted himself for v 
a t ime to the chemistry of cal- .XSXgBf 
ieo printing, etc., holding op- 
pointments in the neighbor- 
hood of Manchester. 
It was in 18-13, when in his 
twenty-sixth year, that ho be- 
came associated with Mr. J. B. 
Lawes, of Rothamsted, then v ''Na\\y 
also a young man of twenty- 
nine, who had already been '\wVV 
engaged for nine years J nag- \\\\y 
ricultural experiments—ever 
since lie took possession of Ids 
entailed estate at, Rothamsted 
in 1834. During the 38 years 
since then the two have been 
harmoniously engaged in a 
systemat ic series of researches 
in agricultural chemistry and 7X;-—L-r 
v — •—_ 
physiology. The first of a long " - v 
series of papers giving the re¬ 
sults of their experiments ap¬ 
peared in 1847. Those reports '1 
have been published from time 
to time in the Journal of the 
Royal Agricultural Society of 
England, the Reports of the 
British Association for the 
Advancement of Science, the 
Journal of the Chemical Society of Loudon, 
the Proceedings and Transactions of the 
Royal Society of London, the Journal of the 
Society of Arts, the Journal of the Horticul¬ 
tural Society of London, the Journal of the 
Royal Dublin Society, the Edinburg Veterin¬ 
ary Review, the Philosophical Magazine, the 
Farmers' Guzette, the Rural New-Yorker, 
NOTES FROM THE RURAL FARM, 
The dry weather continues, and although 
this is the time generally preferred for sow¬ 
ing wheat, none in this locality save our own 
fields, has been sown and few fields have been 
plowed. We availed ourselves of a short 
ruin, ten days ago, that wot the ground of 
our oat field two to three inches in depth, and 
JOSEPH HENRY GILBERT—From a Photograph—Fig. 478 
with Dr. Lawes, the highest honor in its gift— 
one of the Royal Medals. Ho has been a Fel¬ 
low of tho Chemical Society of London since 
1841, and is at the present time one of its Vice- 
Presidents. There is no branch of agricul¬ 
tural chemistry or physiology which the joint 
researches of Dr. Gilbert and Dr. Lawes have 
not enriched; nor is there any single laborer 
dropping all other work, plowed the best way 
we could. Tho out stubble had scarcely rot¬ 
ted; so that, though well harrowed and rolled, 
the surface was full of rubbish that rendered 
nice work in drilling in the seed an impossi¬ 
bility, the drill tubes clogging up continually 
und leaving frequent bulks in spite of the at¬ 
tendance of a second man to free them. 
