March 17. 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
409 
with the wild mustard plant. Even the soil thrown out 
during the excavation of deep wells produces these. Other 
instances are well known, where bones, gypsum, &c., being 
spi'ead, produce the abounding growth of white clover. 
The site of a fire is speedily tenanted, in the same way, by 
totally dilfcrent plants from those growing around the spot. 
Liebig alludes to other instances of a similar kind (Organic 
Chemistry, j). 152). After the great lire of Loudon, it 
seems large quantities of the Erysimum lutifolium were ob¬ 
served growing on the spots where a fire had taken place. 
On a similar occasion, the Blilum capUalum presented itself 
at Copenhagen; the Scnecio viscosus in Nassau; and the 
Sjmrtium scopariiim in Languedoc. After the burning of 
the North American pine-forests, poplars grew on the same 
soil—facts just as incomprehensible to the byo-stander as 
fairy-rings are to even the modern husbandman. 
Let Its, then, before wo examine the cause of these ap¬ 
pearances of peculiar i)lants, banish from our minds all 
ch-eams about their spontaneous generation. Let us rest 
assured that the seeds of the plants produced by crea¬ 
tive wisdom have numberless ways assigned to them for 
their dispersion and the lengthened preservation of their 
vitality, which, although we can, perhaps, but partially 
discern, are fully sufficient to render unnecessary any evi¬ 
dence that He who made them has amply provided for their 
dissemination and preservation in the soil. lYhat we do 
see assures us of these things, even in the commonest 
plants around us. For instance, as Professor Walker re¬ 
marked, the ash and the plane have heavy seeds, but they 
are supplied with wings. A gale of wind can carry them 
from their original lofty situation to a considerable distance, 
and they remain on the tree till that gale arrives. The 
seeds of the more humble plants, that they may rise and be 
dispersed, spread their sail to the wind. The thistle spreads 
his beard, and away he travels to fix his residence in remote 
parts. The seeds of plants, once removed to a distance by 
the winds to their appropriate soils, rapidly vegetate. In 
some other cases they are carried by insects, or by other 
causes, deep into the soil, where they preserve their vitality 
for a lengthened period. The modern farmer will remember 
the variety of mummy wheat recently raised from some 
seeds found in an ancient Egyptian tomb, as a well-known 
instance of the vital tenacity in the seeds of plants. AVe 
need not, therefore, trouble ourselves with needless doubts 
as to the dissemination and preservation of seeds. 
Once conveyed to the soil, those seeds are certain to vege¬ 
tate with the greatest rapidity whose inorganic ingredients 
the soil most abounds in, and are copiously fimiished to the 
plant in, the products of the fires to which we have alluded. 
The phosphate of lime, for instance, and the alkalies pro¬ 
duced by the combustion of wood-fire, have thus their sites 
speedily occupied by white clover, and other grasses, in 
which these salts abound. The very same result is obtained 
by the application of the same salts, procured by other 
sources, to the soil. Liebig has noted some of these things. 
“It is not mere accident,” he remarks (Oryanlc Chem., 151), 
“ that only trees of the fir tribe grow on the sandstone and 
limestone of the Carpathian Mountains and the Jura; whilst 
we find on soils of mica, slate, and granite, in Bavaria, &c., 
the finest forests of other trees which cannot be produced 
on the sandy or calcareous soils upon 'which pines thrive. 
It is explained by the fact, that those trees whose leaves 
are renewed annually require for their leaves six or ten 
times more alkalies than the fir-tree or pine ; and hence, 
when they are placed in soils in which alkalies are contained 
in very small q\iantities, they do not attain maturity. AVhen 
we see such trees growing on a sandy or calcareous soil— 
the Red Beech, the Service-tree, and the AA'ild Cherry, for 
example, thriving luxuriantly on limestone—we may be 
assured that alkalies are present in the soil, for they are 
necessary for their existence. Can we, then, regard it as 
remarkable that such trees should thrive in America, on 
those spots on which forests of pine, which have grown and 
collected alkalies for centuries, have been burnt, and to 
which lands the alkalies are thus at once restored? or that 
plants remarkable for the quantity of alkalies contained in 
their ashes should grow with the greatest luxuriance on the 
localities of conflagrations ? It is thus that wheat will not 
grow on a soil which has produced wormwood (a plant 
remarkably abounding in potash, the ‘ salt of wormwood' of 
the old chemists) ; and that wormwood does not thrive 
where wheat has grown, because they are mutually preju¬ 
dicial, by appropriating the alkalies of the soil. 
It has been sometimes noticed by the farmer, that the 
same luxuriant growth of certain plants is produced on the 
site of fires in a field, although the ashes produced are 
carefully removed. This arises, amongst other reasons 
(even supposing that none of the soluble or insoluble 
IJortion of the ashes is allowed to mix with the soil), by the 
charring effect of the fire upon the organic matters of the 
soil on which it rested ; for all soils contain more or less of 
these animal and vegetable substances, and their partial 
combustion produces the same ingredient, such as charcoal, 
salts of lime, alkalies, Ac., as the weeds or other plants 
burnt on the surface of the land. The amount of organic 
matter contained in soils is, in fact, much more considerable 
than is generally understood. Davy found four per cent, in 
the soil from Sheffield Place, in Sussex, and five per cent, 
in the finely-divided matters of a turnip-soil from Holkham 
{Lee., p. 175j. And how deeply these animal and vegetable 
matters are dispersed, is shown by the fact that they are 
found in even the clays obtained from pits by the makers of 
pottery ware. It is upon similar chemical principles that 
Professor AVay has recently given an explanation of the 
origin of fairy-rings, which are caused by the growth and 
gradual spreading from a centre of certain agarics or toad¬ 
stools. The ashes of these, and of the grasses wffiich formed 
the fairy-ring, being examined, -were found to contain per¬ 
cent {Jour., R. A. S., vol. vii., p. 553)— 
Agarics. 
Grasses. 
Silica. 
lU.lO 
Lime . 
10.47 
Magnesia . 
. 2.20 .... 
2.49 
I’eroxide of ii-on . 
2.93 
Phosphoric acid . 
. 29.42 _ 
0.54 
Sulphuric acid. 
5.40 
Carbonic acid . 
. 3.80 _ 
12.47 
Potash . 
35.23 
Soda . 
. 3.32 .... 
— 
Common salt . 
. 0.41 _ 
5.79 
“ On the foregoing airalysis,” observes Mr. AA’ay, “ I think 
we may clearly explain the whole growth of the fairy-ring. 
A fungus is developed on a single spot of ground, sheds its 
seed, and dies. On the spot where it grew it leaves a 
valuable manuring of phosphoric acid and alkalies, some 
magnesia, and a little sulphate of lime. Another fungus 
might undorrbtedly grow on the same spot again ; but upoir 
the death of the first, the ground becomes occupied by a 
vigorous growth of grass, rising like a phoenix on the ashes 
of its predecessor. An e.xperimeirt was nrade of spreading 
some fungi on the grass of the pasture where the rings 
occur. The letters, in the form of which the fungi were 
arranged, were clearly visible a month afterwards. Such 
researches as these, although they may be correctly regarded 
as mere prelimiuaiy steps in our attainment of knowledge, 
are still advances in the right direction to the examination 
of the abounding phenomena w'hich attend the farmer in 
every field and in every path. They all tend to lead him 
on to higher and holier ground—to elevations whence he 
can discern the arrangements and 'wisdom of God, as clearly 
and as gratefully in the white clover springing up by the 
road-side after, perhaps, a gypsy’s fire, or in the dai-k green 
herbage of a fau-y-riug, as in the luxuriant growth of the 
corn, whose seeds are sown by man and fertilized by his 
labours.”— Cutubeet AY. Johnson. 
NOTES ABOUT ANIMALS. 
The Raven.—A neighbour of mine, who is a farmer, and 
a bit of a naturalist, has liad for some years past a pair of 
Ravens, which have regulaily reared their young on a 
retired part of his estate. Alany have been the attempts of 
bird-nesting-boys to secure them, but without success, as 
they are carefully preserved. A year or two since, a relative 
of the farmer’s wishing to have a pair of the young ones, the 
nest was taken, and the young birds placed in a hamper, 
and sent with other articles in a cart twenty-six miles dis¬ 
tant. On arriving at their destination they were put into a 
