gy 
STYPTIC. 
crimson flowers for the most part in summer, 
have been introduced to the greenhouses of Bri- 
tain ; and most love a soil of sandy peat, and are 
propagated from cuttings. The name styphelia 
is formed from a word signifying ‘rigid ;’ and 
alludes to the compact habit of the plants. 
STYPTIC. A medicine or medicinal applica- 
tion used for stopping a flow of blood. Veteri- 
narians cannot depend on any styptic ; but must 
either tie the bleeding artery both above and be- 
low the wound, or have recourse to pressure or 
to the hot iron. 
STYRAX. See Srorax. 
SUBER. See Corx-Truz and Oak. 
SUBLIMATE. See Corrosive SuBLimatE. 
SUBLIMATION. A chemical or pharmaceuti- 
cal process similar to distillation, but yielding 
the product of the volatilization in a solid form. 
SUBSOIL. See Sor. 
SUBSOIL DRAINING. See Drarninea. 
SUBSOIL PLOUGH. See Puioven. 
SUBSOIL-PLOUGHING. The stirring of the 
subsoil of arable land with a specially constructed 
plough. It differs from both deep - ploughing 
and trench-ploughing in its only stirring the 
subsoil and not mixing any of it with the soil, 
while they bring more or less of it to the surface. 
It performs similar effects on the subsoil to those 
which simple tillage produces on the soil,—pul- 
verizing it, increasing its porosity, accelerating 
its decomposition or disintegration, and enlarg- 
ing its capacity for the circulation of air and 
moisture ; and when it is done on kinds of land 
which are improvable by it, and which possess 
either naturally or. artificially a free and ample 
subterranean outlet for all excess of water, it 
materially improves the relations of the subsoil 
to both the soil and the drainage. But in all 
its offices within the subsoil itself, it acts in 
exactly the same way as deep-ploughing and 
trench-ploughing ; and in all its relational offices 
to the soil and the drainage, in the case at least 
of all sorts of retentive lands, it does positive 
harm and no good without the preconstruction 
of a system of deep subsoil drains; so that a ques- 
tion has been extensively raised, and very warmly 
debated, whether mere subsoil-ploughing be not 
essentially useless,—or, in other words, whether 
all the benefits ascribed to it, and some more, 
may not in every instance be obtainable from 
deep-ploughing or trench-ploughing and from 
subsoil draining. It first came before the notice 
of agriculturists, as a special georgical operation, 
in connexion with Mr. Smith of Deanston’s sys- 
tem of subsoil draining; and it soon became 
permanently associated with that system, in the 
notions and phraseology of multitudes of farmers, 
under the joint name of Deanstonizing; and in 
almost all the experimental trials of it which 
were published during several years, it was so 
invariably combined in practice with the subsoil 
draining, that no opinion could be formed from 
them as to the proportion of the results in any | 
SUBSOIL-PLOUGHING. 365 
case which were due respectively to the drain- 
ing and to the ploughing. In 1836, it acquired 
sudden and extensive popularity, both as a sepa- 
rate operation and as a component part of ‘ Dean- 
stonizing, in consequence of the official recom- 
mendation of it by Mr. Shaw Lefevre, who had 
sat as Chairman of the Committee of the House 
of Commons for enquiring into the distressed 
state of British agriculture; and it afterwards 
rose so soaringly into fame that a great and 
steadily increasing number of Smith’s subsoil- 
ploughs were ordered from the principal manu- 
facturers, not only for most of the agricultural 
districts of Britain, but for Sweden, Prussia, Kuro- 
pean Turkey, the West Indies, and America ; but 
it was challenged from the first, by some of the 
most astute agriculturists, and even by Mr. Smith 
of Deanston himself, as a perfectly worthless or a 
positively mischievous operation apart from effi- 
cient subsoil-draining, and as not at all suitable 
for every kind of land; and it has eventually 
come to be regarded by a large body of the ablest 
georgists either as an operation which can never 
be preferable to deep-ploughing or trench-plough- 
ing, or as one which can be economically prac- 
tised only in particular circumstances or within 
a very limited range of adaptations. Many far- 
mers, however, and even some agricultural wri- 
ters, confound it with deep-ploughing and trench- 
ploughing, or regard all the three as simply 
varieties of one operation ; and since the stirring 
of the subsoil in some way or other is generally | 
allowed to be more or less advantageous on many 
kinds of lands, and very particularly so on some 
stiff and cohesive ones, we shall best consult the 
instruction and convenience of our readers by 
here discussing the whole subject. See the arti- 
cles PULVERIZATION, AERATION, PLouUGHING, DRAIN- 
ina, Sow1ne, and Dritt-HusBanpRry. 
“The chemical effect of pulverizing and break- 
ing up a subsoil,” says Mr. Cuthbert W. Johnson, 
in the 10th volume of the Quarterly Journal of 
Agriculture, “is certainly advantageous to the 
plant in two ways, besides others with which we 
are very likely at present unacquainted ;—first, it 
renders the soil. penetrable to a much greater 
depth by the roots or minute fibres of the plant, 
and consequently renders more available any de- 
composing matters, or earthy ingredients, which 
that substratum may contain; and secondly, it 
renders the soil much more freely permeable by 
the atmosphere, rendering, in consequence, a 
greatly increased supply not only of oxygen gas 
to the roots of the plants, but also yielding more 
moisture, not only from the soil, but from the 
atmospheric air, which moisture, let it be re- 
membered by the cultivator, is in all weathers 
as incessantly absorbing by the soil as it is uni- 
versally contained in the atmosphere, abounding 
most in the latter, in the very periods when it is 
most needed by the plants, that is, in the warmest 
and driest weather. This property possessed by 
thesoil of absorbing moisture from theatmosphere, 
