286 BULLETIN OF THE BUSSEY INSTITUTION. 
periment by Gazzeri* which bears upon this point. He weighed 
out into similar vases two four-pound portions of artificial earth 
that had been deprived of organic matters, and he mixed with 
each of these quantities of earth four ounces of a horse’s hoof cut 
into small fragments. Two beans were planted in one of the vases 
while the soil of the other was left unsown. During the growth of 
the beans, which was very vigorous, the two vases were treated in 
precisely the same way. When the bean-plants had ripened and 
become almost completely dry they were removed from the vase, 
the earth was thrown upon a hair sieve dipped in a tub of water 
and gently kneaded to make it pass as a thin pap through the sieve. 
As nothing remained upon the sieve Gazzeri concluded that the 
fragments of hoof had been completely decomposed. But on sub- 
jecting to a similar operation the earth from the other vase, in 
which nothing had grown, a number of fragments of hoof were 
found upon the sieve. They were soft and, as it were, soapy. 
After drying them, they weighed twenty-two grains: whence it 
appeared that of two equal quantities of hoof otherwise exposed ~ 
to similar conditions, the one in contact with bean-roots had been 
completely decomposed while the other left in mere earth was only 
partially consumed. 
So, too, in the case of Indian Corn, a plant which grows vigor- 
ously in hot weather, it is probable that its observed power of utiliz- 
ing the soil-nitrogen to better advantage than the small grains can,f 
* « Bibliothéque universelle de Genéve” (Agriculture), 1821 (x. s.), 6. 181. 
t+ Compare Professor Atwater’s experiments in ‘‘ American Agriculturist,” 
May, 1879, 38.178. It is interesting to note, in this connection, the import- 
ance which some of the old avrieultural writers attached to maize when re- 
garded as a ‘‘ fallow-erop” fit to precede the small grains. Thus, Arthur 
Young, in his ‘‘ Travels in the Kingdom of France,” Dublin, 1798, Vol. 2. 
page 137, says: ‘‘ In travelling southward, it is a remarkable circumstance 
that fallows never cease till maize is met with; but that afterwards this plant 
becomes the preparation for wheat in the course: 1, maize; 2, wheat.” .. . 
And again, on pages 139, 140, he says: ‘‘ The most singular cireumstance 
is the infinite importance of the culture of maize. From Calais to Quercy 
you never once quit fallows; but no sooner do you enter the climate of maize, 
than fallows are abandoned, except on the poorest soils; this is very curious. 
The line of maize may be said to be the division between the good husbandry 
of the south and the bad husbandry of the north of the kingdom. Till you 
meet with maize, very rich soils are fallowed, but never after; .. . it is 
succeeded by wheat.” ' 
So, too, Jared Eliot, in his ‘‘ Essays upon Field-Husbandry,” page 92 of 
the edition printed in 1811, by Mass. Soc. for Promoting Agriculture, says, 
