254 BULLETIN OF THE BUSSEY INSTITUTION. 
Growth of Buckwheat in a Mixture of Peat and Coal Ashes. — On’ 
December 11, 1872, a glass preserve jar was charged with an intimate 
mixture of 250 grammes of anthracite ashes free from nitrogen, such 
as were used in the'series of experiments recorded on page 54 of this 
“ Bulletin,” and 230 grammes of air-dried peat from the Bussey Farm, 
containing 1.2% of nitrogen, as has been stated on page 135. Three 
buckwheat seeds were planted in this soil, and the jar was watered 
with rain-water until March 4, 1873, when the crop was harvested. 
On December 20, three germinated buckwheat seeds were planted in a 
second jar that had been charged like the first with a mixture of peat 
and coal ashes, and the jar was watered with rain-water like the other ; 
but one of the plants was removed'on January 2, in order to bring the 
second jar into close comparison with the first, where only two out of the 
three seeds that were planted had grown. ‘The results of these experi- 
ments are as follows : — 
The Crops, harvested March 4, 1873, 
No. of the Jar. 
Weighed in grms. Grew to height in 
(Dried at 90° to 100° c.) | inches. Had Seeds 
25 
1.750 
ri Ul 
et BN 
1.100 
The plants had every appearance of being amply supplied with 
nitrogen. ‘They were in fact remarkably vigorous and succulent, so 
much so indeed that the stem of one of the plants burst open longitu- 
dinally when it was about a month old. 
The significance of these results will appear on comparing them with 
those of the table on page 54. It will there be seen that the two 
buckwheat plants of jar No. 5, that were reared with rain-water in 
coal-ashes by itself gave a crop that weighed only a twelfth part as 
much as the worst of the two crops above described ; that they yielded 
but two seeds instead of twenty-two; and that the crop was in every 
respect feeble and insignificant. It will be noticed, moreover, that the 
addition of nitrogenized salts to the coal-ashes enabled them to support 
crops very much in the same way as was the case when peat was 
added. Differences such as these, seen in the concrete, as when the 
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