12 RAGGED ROBBIN. 
sowing, or of imitating the mechanical effects of 
sheep-folding, The operation is performed as 
early in autumn as the land can be wanted from 
pasturing ; and the land, after undergoing it, 
lies untouched till near seed-time, and is then 
harrowed down and ploughed preparatorily to 
sowing. 
RAG. See Rags. 
RAGGED ROBBIN. The cuckoo-flower or 
Lychnis flos-cucult. See Cuckoo-FLowER, 
RAG FALLOW. See Farnow. 
RAGS. ‘Torn and worn pieces of any kind of 
cloth. Linen rags, by means of the simple agency 
of sulphuric acid, yield more than half their 
weight of sugar ; and both they and cotton rags 
form a very important commodity throughout 
Kurope for the manufacture of paper. 
Woollen rags are a valuable manure, particu- 
larly for hops, fruit-trees, and vines. They con- 
tain a very large proportion of albuminous 
matter, and minute portions of lime and silica, 
and traces of various salts. Wool, according to 
analysis by Scherer, comprises 50°653 per cent. 
of carbon, 7:029 of hydrogen, 17°71 of nitrogen, 
and 24608. of oxygen and sulphur. Both woollen 
rags and the waste clippings of fleeces, therefore, 
are powerfully nutrimental to crops; and they 
decompose slowly in the soil, and attract and 
retain moisture, and generate a long course of 
appreciable heat, and form important elastic and 
soluble aliments for absorption by the spongioles ; 
yet in dry seasons, and in the manner in which 
they are commonly used, they have been found 
to attract vermin, create dry mould, and entail 
a considerable amount of evil. The farmers of 
Kent and Berkshire and Oxfordshire, usually cut 
them by means of a chopper and block into 
shreds of about one or two inches square, and 
spread them on their fields by hand, out of a 
common seed basket; and when the rags are ap- 
plied in this way, they serve suitably enough 
either as a top-dressing on young grasses, or as 
an inhumed manure so ploughed in with one 
. furrow as not to be pulled above ground by the 
harrows. But, in general, they would do far 
better to be specially prepared. “ An excellent 
preparation,” says Mr. Donaldson in his Treatise 
on Manures, “has been effected by steeping them 
chopped in small pieces in privies or urine pits; 
and they may then be applied to any crops. 
When chopped small and laid in drills for turnips, 
potatoes, and beet, they failed by 30 per cent. 
against farm-yard dung. The barley and hay 
crops showed a difference for a time after braird- 
ing, as often happens with such manures, but 
none at the time of reaping. It was curious -to 
observe the dark green colour of the artificial 
grasses during winter and spring, till the growth 
commenced, when the difference soon vanished.” 
But one of the best ways of preparing woollen 
rags, so as to effect uniformity of distribution, 
and to make them speedily or duly available for 
the nutrition of crops, and to draw from them a 
RAIN. 
sufficiently rapid supply of food during the vigor- 
ous or hungry period of the growth of quickly 
growing crops, is to cut them into pulp by the 
rag-cutting machinery of a paper-mill, and to 
run the pulp of them immediately into a heap of 
earth, and form it intoa compost. The quantity 
of rags apportioned to any field or to an acre 
cannot at present be reduced to any rule, and 
will in practice be very much determined by the 
abundance and the expense of them as compared 
to those of other suitable manures. A full sup- 
ply of them can seldom or never be had; though, 
when their value becomes better known, they 
will be more carefully collected, and will either 
fall in price or rise in demand. An extensive 
dealer in them informed Mr. Cuthbert Johnson, 
a number of years ago, that at least 20,000 tons 
were then annually consumed by the farmers of 
the South of England ; and some writers allege 
that the average quantity in which they are 
applied amounts to about 13 cwt. per acre. 
“Twenty-five cwt. per acre of woollen rags,” 
says Boussingault, “the cost of which in France 
may be about £3, has been found sufficient as 
manure for 3 years. The slowness. with which 
wool decomposes, indeed, causes its action to be 
continued during 6 or 8 years. ‘Twenty-five cwt. 
of woollen rags may be held equivalent to up- 
wards of 40 tons of farm dung, which at the price 
of 5s. 10d. per ton, would cost £11 13s.4d. At the 
end of 3 years, M. Delonchamps, an excellent 
practical farmer, gives his land a dressing of 
farm dung for 3 years more, when he returns to 
the wool. Sinclair says that they are best suited 
for dry and sandy or chalky soil, and this because 
they attract moisture. I have not found the 
fact to be so. 
manured with this article. I have found the 
pieces to decompose with extreme slowness, and 
the effect upon the vines for a very long time to 
be scarcely perceptible.” See the article Hop. 
RAGWORT. See GrovunDsEt. 
RAIL. See Corn-Craxe and Water- Ratu. 
RAILING. See Pare. 
RAIN. This meteorological phenomenon de- 
pends upon the formation and dissolution of 
clouds. The humidity suspended in the atmo- 
sphere is derived from the evaporation of water, 
partly from Jand, but chiefly from the vast ex- 
panse of the ocean. A surface of lake, of pasture, 
corn-field or forests supports a continual evapora- 
tion, augmented only by the dryness of the air, 
and the rapidity of its successive contacts. Even 
ploughed land will supply nearly as much mois- 
ture to the atmosphere as a sheet of water of 
equal dimensions. If the whole of the waters, 
which fall from the heavens, were to return 
again, the evaporation from the ground might 
be sufficient alone to maintain the perpetual cir- 
culation. But more than one third of all the 
rains and melted snows are carried by the rivers 
to the ocean, which must hence restore this con- 
tinued waste. The air, in exhaling its watery 
In the very dry soil of a vineyard, 
—————— 
—__—, | 
