48 AKGILOPS. 
wards through the epidermis in order to attain 
maturity. Mr. Dovaston, writing in the Maga- 
zine of Natural History, and endeavouring to ac- 
count for the appearance of fungi in those circles 
in grass lands popularly called fairy rings, starts 
the additional objection that spores never appear 
to germinate in a quiescent or unexcited state, 
and suggests a theory which other naturalists 
have adopted, and which appears to coincide per- 
fectly with facts. He says, “ We very rarely find 
them without some visible (and never perhaps 
without some latent) excitement, such as dung, 
combustion, decomposing woods or weeds; in- 
deed, the seeds of fungi are so absolutely impal- 
pable, that I have sometimes thought they are 
taken up with the juices.into the capillary tubes 
of all vegetables, and so appear, when decompo- 
sition affords them a pabulum or excitement, on 
| rotten wood and leaves; and this seed is pro- 
duced in such quantities, thrown off so freely, 
and borne about so easily, that perhaps there is 
hardly a particle of matter whose surface is not 
_ imbued therewith ; and had these seeds the power 
of germinating by mere wetness alone, without 
| some exciting cause, all surface would be crowded 
| with them, and pasturage impeded.” 
The excit- 
ing cause which Mr. Dovaston assigns is elec- 
tricity. See articles Funer and Minprw.—Lou- 
don’s Encyclopedia of Plants—Sowerby’s English 
Fungi—Memoirs of the Caledonian Horticultural 
Socrvety.—Loudon’s Gardener's Magazine, vols. iii., 
iv., Vil, vuli., and ix.—AMagazine of Natural His- 
tory.— Quarterly Journal of Agriculture—Loudon’s 
Hortus Britannicus. 
AKGILOPS,—popularly Harp Grass. A genus 
of grasses of the tribe olyrez. One species, the 
rough-spiked, is from the Levant; one, the Cre- 
tan, is from Candia; one, the cylindrical, is from 
Hungary ; and two, the oval-spiked and the long- 
spiked, are from the south of Europe. The rough- 
spiked is perennial; and all the others are an- 
nual. The oval-spiked is abundant in Sicily; it 
is gathered into bunches and burnt ; and its seeds 
are collected in a slightly roasted condition after 
the burning, and are used by the peasantry as 
an agreeable article of food. 
JEGIPYRUS, or Goat’s Wurat. A variety 
of buckwheat ; so called because it is long-bearded 
like the goat. 
fHGIRUS. The black poplar. The name 
gegirus means to rise again, and was applied to 
the poplar in allusion to the exuberance of young 
shoots rising from its roots. 
ANGOCERAS. The herb trigonella or fenu- 
greek. The name zegoceras signifies goat-horned, 
and alludes to the scythe-shaped, acute-pointed 
pods of the fenugreek. 
ZEGYLOPS. A disease of the inward coat of 
the eye, to which goats are subject; also, the 
great wild oat-grass, and the acorns of the holm- 
oak, on account of their supposed resemblance to 
the eye of a goat. 
AUGYPTIACUM. A mixture of verdigris, 
vinegar, and honey, sometimes used for the dis- 
ease called foul in the foot of cattle, when no 
fungus or proud flesh is present to require the 
use of the butyr of antimony. It is composed of 
5 oz. powdered verdigris, 1 lb. of honey, and 7 oz. 
of vinegar, boiled together to the consistence of 
honey. » 
AERATION. The intermixing of air with the 
soil. The presence and circulation of the air in 
the soil, in as many minute streams and as large 
aggregate quantities as possible, is important for 
bringing abundance of carbonic acid and of am- 
moniacal gas into contact with the spongioles of 
plants, for supplying oxygen to the requisite pro- 
cess of decomposing vegetable manures and other 
dead vegetable substances in the soil, and for 
carrying off disadvantageous gases formed by the 
excrementitious deposits of plants. Any degree 
of vegetation requires aeration of the soil as ab- 
solutely indispensable; and a free or luxuriant 
vegetation, all other conditions being equal, will 
be promoted in the exact degree in which aera- 
tion exists. 
The grand means of effecting aeration are such 
as maintain porosity of the soil. Mere pulveri- 
zation—designed to be effected by the most 
thorough processes of tillage, and so much and 
justly insisted on as a prime and essential feature 
of good farming—brings particles of soil into con- 
tact with all the radicles and spongioles of plants, 
so as to employ and stimulate them all in the 
work of taking up nourishment to the'interior of | 
plants; and though it often, at the same time, 
makes the soil thoroughly porous, and in conse- 
quence secures the processes of aeration, yet it 
occasionally makes no provision whatever for 
these processes, but rather tends to prevent them. 
Suppose a soil to consist of minutely comminuted 
particles, to be free from stones or gravel, to pos- 
sess a considerable tendency to cohesion or con- 
solidation—suppose it to be one of those clays, or 
fine loams, or greasy moulds which, when wetted 
and slightly rubbed, take a skin or surface almost 
as smooth as crockery—a reflecting farmer will 
see at a glance that, under certain conditions of 
weather, this soil may, by the very process of 
thorough pulverization, be in a short time ren- 
dered almost impenetrable by the air,—and that, 
in order to effect its aeration, the tilling of it 
must be accompanied with such a kind of manur- 
ing as, either by mechanical or by chemical ac- 
tion, will diminish its tendency to cohesion. The 
fine powdering of the soil, let it be understood, 
only occasions every part of a seed or root to be 
in contact with the materials of food; and the 
porosity or loose texture of the soil, during the 
whole period of a plant’s growth, is requisite for 
the digestion of these materials by the supply of 
air. Hence, the utility of hoeings and other stir- 
rings of the soil during the growth of plants,— 
and the necessity of proportioning the extent or 
number of these operations to the degree of stiff- 
ness or looseness naturally possessed by the soil. 
| AERATION. | 
