Part 10

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To the same.

CLITHEROE, 7th March, 1848.

On continuing my attempts to grow wheat on the same land year after year, I observed that the crop of 1845 was very seriously injured by the deficient drainage--the old drains having been destroyed by the subsoil plough. It was therefore necessary to replace them: they were accordingly put in four feet deep. This occupied so much time that the season for sowing wheat had gone by, and the ground was cropped with potatoes, which were got up in September, and the wheat might have been got in early in October. But seeing in your paper that sowing too early was not advisable, and also being carried away by the arguments of the thin-seeders, I deferred sowing until the middle of November, and then put in little seed; and the winter proving very unfavourable, when the wheat was coming up, there was not half plant enough in the spring, and I hesitated whether to plough up the ground or drill in barley. I determined to do the latter, which was done on the 18th April, and wheat and barley grew up together, and when cut and threshed, proved to be equal to 48 bushels to the acre.

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LOW MOOR, 31st December, 1844.

HENRY BRIGGS, ESQ.

I duly received your obliging letter in reply to my pamphlet on the growth of wheat year after year on the same land, and now offer my rejoinder to your remarks. You seem to consider the expense is too great under the system pursued by me; and that it was more than was required by the crop, is proved in my opinion by the fact that the fertility of the land is very much augmented since the commencement of the experiment in 1841: as my first crop with guano alone produced only 27 bushels per acre, whilst this year from guano alone the produce was 42 bushels. But still I think that your allowance of manure is far too little, and not exactly what I should apply, and I shall frankly state my objections and opinions, in the hope that they may elicit a reply from you, as it will be from discussion and the experiments instituted to test the various theories propounded, that agriculture will be most materially benefited. You state that Liebig's present theory is, that plants obtain the necessary oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, and nitrogen from the rain and atmosphere, and that the plants merely require the supply of inorganic constituents, and that you are inclined to agree with him. My copy of his work on the Chemistry of Agriculture is his first edition; and I don't know how far he has since modified or altered the opinions therein expressed, which are in some degree at variance with each other. He states that it may be received as an axiom in agricultural chemistry that the nitrogen of the atmosphere is never assimilated by plants, except in the form of ammonia or nitric acid. He certainly states that plants and animals derive their nitrogen from the atmosphere; but why, if this be true, does he attach so much importance to the excrements (particularly urine), of men and animals being husbanded with so much care? and he states that for every pound of urine wasted, a pound of wheat is thrown away. But even if he said it was utterly worthless, every practical farmer who has tried it knows how exceedingly valuable it is. It may be said there are other ingredients in urine besides ammonia, and these are what make it valuable; and in reply to this I would ask what is it that makes the ammoniacal liquor from gasworks so valuable? There are no phosphates or alkalies there, and yet what a powerful stimulant it is. Again, Liebig states that the carbon is derived from the atmosphere; but to say nothing of the argument which might be deduced from the advantage which is derived by plants from having their soil loosened about their roots, the experiments of Dumas and Boussingault prove that a tree which was cut off below the branches expired a large quantity of carbonic acid. It may be asked how I know this was not precipitated by the rain. I don't know; but if the plant would assimilate this, why should it not assimilate that which arises from the decomposition of the carbonaceous matter in the soil? My idea is that it does both, and that carbon in the soil does good if it offers an abundant supply of carbonic acid to the plant when it is in a condition to appropriate it. Your allowance of lime appears to me to be far too small, for if any reliance can be placed on my experiments, lime can be profitably used to far greater extent than you seem to imagine. And, again, you seem to think that where there is plenty of silex in the soil, the plant will be able to obtain as much as it requires. I think that it is quite necessary that the silex should be in a soluble state, as I think that it is not only desirable that all the elements necessary to fertility should be in the soil, but that they should be in such a form that they can be assimilated by the plant. Some of our compounds for producing fertility may perhaps be as absurd as it would be to give muriatic acid to a man troubled with indigestion, because free muriatic acid is found in the stomach of a healthy person. Let me recommend you to try both silex and magnesia in a soluble state, and I think you will be satisfied with the benefit derived from their use.

Recurring again to the quantity of manure necessary to grow thirty-six bushels of wheat, I would ask, why limit yourself to so small a crop? The difference in the cost of your manuring a field, and my manuring it, is more than made up by the increase of fourteen bushels of wheat and the corresponding increase of straw, even if the land did not improve every year by the application; and as the seed, rent, labour, and liabilities of the land are the same whether you grow a small crop or a large one, why not have it as large as possible? Again, if I applied far more manure than was necessary, I ought to have had the crop equally good throughout the field; but on the ridge of the hill, where the soil was thin and poor, neither straw nor wheat were so good as they were where it was deeper and richer. My own opinion is, that the plant is never able to extract from the soil all the manure, and therefore it ought to be brought up to a good standard before good crops can be expected. I am not satisfied with any analogy that I can think of, but the best that occurs to me is that of a cloth in a dye- copper. You can never get it to absorb either all or half the colouring matter, and if you don't use far more than is taken up by the cloth, you will never obtain the desired results. Besides, in chemical combinations it is desirable to use far more than the chemical equivalents, or the experiments don't succeed. I perceive that you intend to use guano next year, and that you intend to use it along with the seed. I trust it will not be sowed in contact with either the seed or the quicklime, which you proposed to use in some of your land. The best time I have found for applying guano is in wet weather, just when vegetation is making a start in the spring--say the last week in March, or the first week in April--as I fear a large part of the soluble portion of it would be washed away by the rains of winter. It is true we have had none this winter, but when shall we have such another? Did you ever use woollen rags as manure? They ought to be excellent, as they are almost all albumen, and are, I fancy, to be had at a very moderate price, not far from you. Can you inform me what it is that causes the land to be clover-sick? If it is the abstraction of something from the soil, what is that something? Sir Humphrey Davy said that a dressing of gypsum would prevent it; but clover does not succeed here (even when dressed with gypsum), if sowed every four years. One reason why I think so small a quantity of manure will not succeed, is based on the theory of excrementitious secretion. Decandolle proved that this secretion took place, but he did not succeed in proving that it poisoned the land for a similar crop. I can only reason from analogy, and it does not follow that an analogy drawn from animal life will hold good when applied to plants; but if we were to feed an animal with pure gluten and pure starch, with the proper quantity of phosphates, &c., are we to suppose it would have no excrements? Let this be applied to plants: are we to suppose that the plant assimilates all that is absorbed by its roots and leaves? When that which is absorbed is what would enter into the composition of the plant, is it not more rational to suppose that the inorganic and gaseous constituents only combine in fixed proportions, and that although the plant may absorb a much larger proportion of one than is required, the surplus is discharged excrementitiously, and perhaps may be unfitted for entering into the plant until it has undergone a decomposition? In conclusion, I trust you will pardon my frankness in so boldly canvassing your opinions; but it is in this collision of opinion that the truth will be elicited, and if I judge you aright, it is that you wish to discover whether it harmonizes with your preconceived notions or not.

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LOW MOOR, 1st May, 1845.

HENRY BRIGGS, ESQ.

I duly received your pamphlet on the use of lime, for which I am much obliged, and am delighted to perceive that you confirm the idea (expressed in my pamphlet on the growth of wheat every year on the same land) that the excessive use of lime is ultimately injurious to the fertility of the soil to which it is applied. This, coming from a gentleman of your reputation and experience, will, I hope, induce someone capable of performing the experiment to endeavour to ascertain with precision how much lime it is desirable to apply to an acre to give the best results, and with the least waste, assuming that the land contained little or none previous to the experiment; and it would also be desirable to ascertain whether it is better, in an economical point of view, to apply a small quantity every year, or a larger quantity every third or fourth. My own opinion is in favour of the former method, except that it is difficult to get it ploughed in, particularly in wet weather, immediately after spreading (which is essential where you grow wheat on the same land every year) without injuring the feet of the horses. You speak of ten days or a fortnight being necessary to neutralize caustic lime, but our horses had their feet injured by it six weeks after it had been spread on the land, last year, although the weather had been wet almost the whole of the time, say from the beginning of February to the middle of March. You appear to think that lime will replace silica in the wheat plant. Whose authority have you for this? It will be very important to establish this supposition, but I fear it is too good news to be true. On referring to your letter, I find you don't say what I supposed you did, but that the lime liberates the soluble silicates, potash, &c. This may be, and certainly the beneficial effects of lime in growing wheat are not to be explained by any other hypothesis with which I am acquainted. I am this year trying some experiments to ascertain (if I can) the cause of clover- sickness, and I hope to be in a position to say whether your supposition that lime, gypsum, &c. will prevent it, is correct. My experiments so far are opposed to this theory, but it is not very safe or philosophical to draw conclusions from one or two experiments only. I doubt the possibility of making silicate of soda by merely mixing lime, sand, and salt together, as my chemical friends tell me this cannot be accomplished unless the silex and the alkali are fused together. If a soluble silicate of soda can be made in the way you mention, it will be a great saving of expense. Has it been tried? You have no doubt seen a report of the enormous crop of wheat grown in a field in Norfolk last year (90 bushels to the acre), and that the Royal Agricultural Society have determined to have the soil analyzed by Dr. Playfair. This is very desirable, but as Dr. Playfair is more of a lecturing than an analyzing chemist, I think it is very necessary that his analysis should be checked by another, made by the most eminent chemist that Europe can produce, for 90 bushels is so unheard-of a crop, that no expense should be spared which would enable us to ascertain what the soil contained to enable it to produce such a crop, which is the more remarkable as the field seems to have been a good many years under the plough. As your Wakefield Farmers' Club has many wealthy members in it, allow me to hint the desirableness of your undertaking this analysis, which, if properly performed, will be worth a thousand times more than its cost. When you are aware that even Davy missed 16 per cent. of alumina in one of his analyses and that the chemists of the present day don't seem to have detected the potash which exists so abundantly in potato-tops, you will, I think, agree how exceedingly important it is that such analysis should be checked by others, made without any communication between the parties. You speak of an original letter of Liebig's appearing in the "Farmer's Journal." On what subject is it? as I have no means of referring to the periodical in question. Does it throw any light upon the new manure for which he is said to be taking out a patent? You speak of humus and humic acid. What do you understand by humus? as, according to Liebig, humus sometimes means one thing and sometimes another, and he appears to treat it very much as modern chemists treat phlogiston, as something which they don't comprehend, but which they need to explain the phenomena of vegetation. If you are a believer in humus, what is it composed of, and how does it act in forwarding vegetation? I suppose you will reply, By combining with oxygen and forming humic acid. But would not the theory of the decomposition of carbon do quite as well? I don't perceive the injurious effects of quicklime upon grass land which you anticipate in your paper, but the contrary, and the more caustic it is the more beneficial is its action, so far as I can judge from my own experiments; and it is my practice in liming grass land to spread it as soon as I can get it into the state of flour. I shall be glad to hear the result of your electrical experiment--at present I am rather sceptical on the subject.

P.S.--Am I to suppose that you have abandoned the idea of manuring an acre of wheat for thirteen shillings?

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THE CULTIVATION OF WHEAT.

October 1st, 1852.

To the Editor of the "Manchester Guardian."

The increasing quantity of agricultural produce consumed in this country makes it desirable that the cultivation of the land should be carried to the highest point consistent with profit; and the increasing scarcity of agricultural labourers will shortly render it difficult for the farmers in some districts to gather in their crops. It therefore becomes increasingly desirable that every mechanical contrivance which will facilitate their doing so should be made as perfect as possible; and also that the crops themselves should be so cultivated as to make these mechanical aids to work to the greatest advantage.

But it has been a difficult matter (at least in the wet climate of Lancashire) to ascertain how far it is prudent to manure for wheat, for in unfavourable seasons the plant runs so much to straw that it is liable to lodge, and become mildewed; in which cases the manure is not only wasted, but becomes positively injurious, as appears to be the case in the South of England this year, and as was also the case in the North in 1845, when every shilling expended in manuring the wheat crops of that year made the crop at least a shilling worse than if no manure had been applied.

But if we could find a wheat so short in the straw that it would bear heavy manuring without being lodged, wheat-growing would be a far less hazardous occupation than it is at present, and we might confidently calculate on a far greater production than we can now.

The following appear to me to be some of the advantages of growing a short-strawed wheat:--

1st. It will bear highly manuring without lodging, and with much less liability to mildew, than a long-strawed wheat.

2nd. The proportion of grain to straw is greater in short than in long-strawed wheat.

3rd. As it very rarely lodges, it will be far better suited to the reaping-machine than a long-strawed wheat; and no doubt other advantages will occur to the minds of experienced agriculturists.

When making these assertions I ought to state that my experience of wheat-growing does not extend beyond the counties of York and Lancaster, but from what I can learn of the agriculture of more southerly districts, I fancy these opinions of mine will be found correct even there. I may be asked to prove my assertion, and I will endeavour to do so.

I have been experimenting on the growth of wheat for the last ten or eleven years--particularly with reference to the practicability of doing this on the same land year after year; and that I might do it in the most satisfactory manner, I have varied my seed-wheat and my manure very frequently: but I very soon discovered that the advantages of abundance of manure and high cultivation did not insure good crops of wheat, inasmuch as in our moist climate, we had not one summer in five that was favourable, and consequently the crop was generally lodged, and the straw mildewed. I found that the time of sowing, and also of applying the manure, were matters of great importance, and it occurred to me that the remedy would be--a straw so short, that it would not lodge when highly manured. I consequently addressed a query to the "Gardener's Chronicle," asking what was the shortest-strawed variety of wheat known, and was told that Piper's Thickset was so; I therefore got some of this sort from Mr. Piper, which I have cultivated since 1847. It is a coarse red wheat, but the quality has improved with me every year, and this season being the third successive crop on the same land, I have nearly eight quarters to the statute acre from this variety.

2. The proportion of wheat in Piper's Thickset is 38 per cent. of the gross weight of the crop; in the Hopetown wheat (I speak of my own crops only), 34 per cent.