1846. THE CULTIVATOR. 51 
a cloth and laid on a board in the sun, or it may be 
dried in shallow vessels in a warm room; or it may be 
dried in stoves or ovens. Prepared in the manner de¬ 
scribed, the flour may not only be used as starch, but 
may be used with wheat flour for making bread, pud¬ 
dings, &c. It is also used as arrow root, and is a deli¬ 
cate food for weak digestions, for children, and for the 
sick. 
IVIR NORTON’S LETTERS.—NO. XX 
ENGLISH FARMING. 
Laboratory of Ag. Chemistry Association,) 
Edinburgh, Nov. 27, 1845. ) 
L. Ltjcker, Esq. —During the earlier part of this 
month, I spent nearly a week, in company with two 
other pupils of Prof. Johnston, in travelling across the 
northern part of Northumberland and Cumberland, from 
North Shields to Carlisle. 
In giving a brief sketch of our progress, I shall only 
have space to mention those things that more especially 
interested us. Between North Shields and Newcastle, 
the country seems tolerably fertile, but wet in many 
places. Some of the farms bore evidence of skillful ma¬ 
nagement. On the south bank of the Tyne, I was sur¬ 
prised to find that none even of the neighboring far¬ 
mers seemed to make use of any of the kinds of refuse 
from the extensive Jarrow chemical works. Immense 
quantities of impure sulphate of lime, (gypsum,) form¬ 
ed in the carbonate of soda process, are thrown away. 
Pure gypsum is so cheap that this substance would not 
pay for transportation to any distance; but those who 
live near might surely avail themselves of it. 
Hexham was our first stopping place after leaving 
Newcastle. I have spoken of the Tyne up to this place, 
in a former letter. We drove the same day 7 or 8 
miles from Hexham up the banks of the North Tyne. 
We here saw some farming that, so far as our experi¬ 
ence went, we unanimously decided to be superior to 
anything in Durham. I suspect that the Tyne side 
farmers owe much of this superiority to natural advan¬ 
tages. The soil is not so stiff as that of Durham, and 
generally lies so as to ensure in a great degree natural 
draining. Some of the fields of turneps were particularly 
fine, and from the appearance of the stubble we judged 
that the grain crops had also been very good; though 
the quality was somewhat injured by a long continu¬ 
ance of wet weather. 
High up the North Tyne, we came into a wilder 
country, and visited the farm of Mr. Ridley, called 
Park End. He is chiefly a stock farmer, and keeps his 
herds during the summer among the hills and on the 
moors, bringing them down during the winter. Few 
of them had come home at the time of our visit, not 
more than twenty. His stock is nearly all Durham, and 
I was surprised by the size and beauty of some of these 
animals, which had been always kept on poor, bleak 
moors, without shelter. Though of course, inferior 
to what they would have been if kept up and fed highly, 
they were still large of their age, and promised to at¬ 
tain a very good weight, showing that the full-blooded 
Durhams can rough it if necessary. Mr. R. is quite a 
pig fancier, and has a considerable variety of the most 
approved breeds. We only had time to walk through 
one or two fields; these needed draining; the pastures 
were mossy, and required top dressing in addition to 
the drain. We found the potato disease doing great in¬ 
jury here as elsewhere, several persons estimating that 
about one-third of their crops were affected. 
The next day after our return to Hexham, we were 
upon the farm of Mr. Harbottle, and there found the 
disease worse than in any place we had visited. He 
himself told us that not one in a thousand was sound, 
and on examination of the heaps we did not find even 
one untouched. He has about 40 tons, and is now feed¬ 
ing his horses, pigs, and cattle upon them, with no bad 
effects. The best thing he could do, would be to convert 
such as he cannot soon feed out into potato flour. It can 
be done at a small expense, and is infinitely preferable 
to wasting the time in vain attempts to preserve such 
a large quantity of infected tubers. 
On our way from Hexham to Carlisle, by railway, the 
greater part of the distance was over a high and some¬ 
what bleak country, except on the very borders of the 
streams, where were uniformly fine farms and large 
crops. Some of the Swedish turneps near Hexham, 
were quite remarkable. We saw in some places, but 
not many, piles of draining tiles, in this climate the in¬ 
dispensable preliminaries to anything like thorough im¬ 
provements. Another good sign was the presence of 
lime kilns wherever any limestone appeared at the 
surface. Near Carlise, the appearance of the country 
greatly improved, and we noticed some particularly 
good pasture fields. 
After two or three days at Carlisle, we crossed the 
country, 94 miles, to Edinburgh by coach. Some of 
the country on the banks of the Ettrick and Tweed was 
very beautiful, and showed evidence of good farmers. 
The day was one of the worst that even this climate 
can produce, cold, windy, and foggy, with a pelting 
shower once in about half an hour. This may have had 
some influence in our decision, at which we unanimously 
arrived, that the greater part of the country from Car¬ 
lisle to Edinburgh, was wet, and that the farming gene¬ 
rally was not such as should exist in Scotland. 
With the present letter I must close a series which 
has extended through a period of eighteen months. I 
am about to make a short tour upon the Continent for 
the purpose of seeing some of the most celebrated labo¬ 
ratories. My stay in each place will be brief, as I in¬ 
tend returning home early in the spring, and I shall 
therefore have no time for any writing but such as is 
absolutely necessary. Your columns have enabled me 
as it were to keep up a communication with my coun¬ 
try in general, in addition to private correspondence. 
I should be quite satisfied to know that your readers 
have experienced half the pleasure in the perusal that I 
have in the writing of these letters. Hoping again to 
be your contributor, in our own country, 
I am very truly yours, John P. Norton. 
KITCHEN CHEMISTRY.—No. I. 
VINEGAR. 
Principles. —If a solution of pure sugar in water, 
be carefully excluded from the air, it will remain per¬ 
fectly unaltered for any length of time. If the air have 
access, it gradually becomes sour, but no alcohol is 
formed. But if some organic substance be introduced 
which is itself in a state of slow decomposition, the 
particles of sugar partake of the same change, and alco¬ 
hol is the result. Yeast is specially active in inducing 
this kind of fermentation; it is also effected by blood, 
white of egg, glue, and flesh, if they have begun to pu- 
trify. But the most important substances in practice, 
are vegetable albumen and gluten, which exist in all 
fruits and seeds, differing only in character in different 
plants. If the fruit remains entire and uninjured, the 
air is excluded, and the gluten is unchanged; but if it 
be crushed or broken, air has access, oxygen is ab¬ 
sorbed, and the fermentation of the fruit commences by 
the combined action of its sugar and gluten. The ne¬ 
cessity for oxygen is only ai the commencement; after 
fermentation has begun, it proceeds through the whol« 
mass, though the air be excluded. Yeast is nothing 
more than a mass of vegetable gluten (mixed indeed 
with other substances) after the slowly fermenting pro¬ 
cess has actually commenced. 
As a solution of sugar is not converted into alcohol, 
without the addition of a third fermenting substance, 
so a solution of alcohol is not converted into vinegar, 
without such intervention. Cider in this country, malt 
liquors in England, and fermented grape-juice in wine 
countries, are used for making vinegar. All these con¬ 
tain an abundance of organic matter, which induces fer¬ 
mentation ; they absorb oxygen from the air, and give 
off 1 hydrogen in the form of water. Hence, unlike the 
