a 
BARREN FLOWERS. 
little matter which can nourish plants, or are 
even impregnated with very noxious matters, 
and might therefore be loosely designated barren 
earth; but they possess their bad properties, not 
at all in the capacity of subsoils, but solely in 
consequence of their peculiar mineral composi- 
tion. No stratum of pulverulent earth, merely 
by lying unstirred below a long cultivated sur- 
face stratum, either is barren or becomes so; but 
every stratum, unless naturally possessing some 
poisonous ingredient, is capable, if brought to 
the surface, of being rendered immediately ser- 
viceable as a soil. Two main uses of all soils are 
to serve as the feet and legs of a plant by keep- 
ing it steady and upright, and to act as its stom- 
ach by circulating moisture and gases; and these 
purposes can be accomplished, in the case of most 
cultivated plants, by almost any pulverulent sub- 
soil which may be brought to the surface. A 
third and only other chief use of soils is to afford 
nourishment to plants, principally from alkaline 
| matters and from humus; and even this use— 
which formerly was very generally regarded as 
_ the entire function of soils—can in part be largely 
served by the felspathic, aluminous, and calcare- 
ous ingredients which exist in almost all subsoils, 
and will in remainder be fully accomplished, in 
most instances, by the addition of ordinary 
manures. The whole practice of trenching, in 
fact, as well as knowledge afforded by miner- 
alogy and agricultural chemistry, demonstrates 
the utter nonsense of the old notion of barren 
earth. 
BARREN FLOWERS. Flowers which can 
fructify but are not hermaphrodite, or flowers 
which either want the organs of fructification or 
have them not in a propagative condition. Bar- 
ren flowers in the former sense are perfectly na- 
tural, and constitute three of the twenty-four 
classes into which Linneus distributed the whole 
vegetable world; but barren flowers in the latter 
sense are either maimed by art or possess a dis- 
eased or an anomalous character. The three 
classes of naturally barren flowers are technically 
called moneecious, dicecious, and polygamous,— 
words which mean respectively one-housed, two- 
housed, and many-married. Some flowers of 
moneecious plants contain only pistils, and some 
contain only stamens ; but flowers of both kinds 
are found on the same plant. Some flowers of 
dicecious plants contain only pistils, and some 
contain only stamens; and flowers of both kinds 
are never found on the same plant,—some plants 
being exclusively pistiliferous, and some exclu- 
sively stameniferous. Some flowers of polygam- 
ous plants contain only pistils, some contain 
only stamens, and some contain both pistils and 
stamens; and flowers of all the three kinds are 
found on the same plant. About 850 species of 
moncecious plants, 660 of dicecious, and 730 of 
polygamous, either grow wild or are cultivated 
in Great Britain. Barren flowers, of the ano- 
malous or diseased kind, are exceedingly numer- 
BARREN SOILS. 
ous, and occur in almost all the divisions of 
phenogamous or flowering plants; they either 
have an occasional existence in consequence of 
abortivity, or a permanence and independence of 
character in connexion with phytological habit ; 
they in some cases exist in all circumstances in 
which their plants grow, and in other cases are 
produced only under unnatural or unhealthy 
conditions of climate, temperature, soil, or cul- 
tivation ; they comprise a very large propor- 
tion of the flowers which are most admired and | 
cultivated by florists; and, in general, they be- 
long to all plants, whether individuals or species, 
which will not produce seeds, or require to be pro- 
pagated by some other method than that of sow- 
ing. Familiar examples of anomalous or diseased 
barren flowers, are the side florets of two-rowed 
barley, and all the thoroughly double flowers of 
the flower-garden, such as those of carnation, 
stock, rocket, hepatica, and balsam. 
BARREN LAND. See Wastz Lanp. 
BARREN SOILS. Soils or surface - strata 
which have little or no vegetation, or which 
cannot be reclaimed or cultivated, or which pro- 
duce only poor, coarse, and scanty herbage, or 
which can render only meagre and unremunerat- 
ing returns to the farmer. The phrase, in the 
first of these senses, designates absolute wilder- 
ness; in the second, perfectly waste or inacces- 
sible morass or mountain; in the third, wild, 
shallow, moorland pasturage ; and, in the fourth, 
stubborn, churlish, refractory land. Many far- 
mers use the phrase in only the last of these | 
senses; few use it in more than the third and 
the fourth; and some occasion much confusion 
of idea by applying it also to naturally good land 
in a bad condition, or, in technical phrase, to 
arable land out of heart. We shall use it princi- 
pally as the farmers do; yet we must occasion- 
ally extend it to its more legitimate or literal 
meanings. 
Some soils, as mere sands, mere clays, or mere 
gravels, are barren in consequence of the enor- 
mous predominance of only one kind of earthy 
matter ; and most of such lie upon subsoils which 
are exactly like themselves, and therefore unable 
to furnish requisite elements of fertility. Other 
soils, as the surfaces of bogs, fens, and morasses, 
are barren in consequence, partly of over-satura- 
tion with stagnant water, and partly of the enor- 
mous predominance of unfermented, antiseptic, 
organic matter. Other soils, but seldom of more 
than very limited extent, are barren in conse- 
quence of poisonous impregnation with saline 
matter such as saltpetre, or of corrosive mineral 
matters such as the oxides of iron. Other soils, 
as those of portions of ill-managed farms in Great 
Britain and Ireland, and of many extensive tracts 
of country in Italy, in Asia Minor, and in Syria, 
are temporarily barren in consequence of the 
quondam extraction from them of their elements 
of fertility, by the most scourging husbandry, 
and the subsequent abandonment of them to 
