It is impossible to say so far, with the other Implement Show in the Great Exhibition, how this outlay of mind and money may be rewarded. But London looks like business, the more particularly as refers to the Foreign Market. With only a morning in the show, we must leave the lists and facts we are enabled to give so far to speak for themselves. No doubt the absence of any premiums has rather damped the opening of this section of the Exhibition, and the world agricultural and otherwise depends only the more directly on the active interest excited by the awards for stock. In our next number we shall proceed more fully with this eventful history; embracing as our Reports will the character and strength of the stock classes, and the Prize Lists arranged on our own plan, with a more complete examination of the implement stands, and a full description of the steam-plough trials at Farningham. The following is a List of the Exhibitors of Implements: ALLCHIN & SON, Northampton. ALLCOCK, Ratcliffe-on-Trent. ALLNUTT, City (wheat diagrams, farmers' account-books). ANGEL, City (agricultural and horticultural books). ARCHER, New North-road. ARMSTRONG, Penrith. ASHBY & Co., Stamford. AVELING & PORTER, Rochester (agricultural locomotive). BAKER, Wisbech (combined blowing and dressing machines) BAKER, Compton (iron water and manure carts). BAKEWELL & Co., Gracechurch-street (steam boiler and engine fittings). BALL, W., Rothwell. BALL, G., North Kilworth. BAMLETT, ADAMS & Co., Great Smeaton. BANKS, Camberwell (model of suspension railway). BARRETT, EXALL, AND ANDREWES, Reading. BEAR, Sudbury (French burr millstones). BELLISS AND SEEKINGS, Islington, near Birmingham. BIGG, Dover Road, London (sheep-dipping composition and apparatus). BOBY, Bury St. Edmunds. BONDS AND ROBINSON, Halesworth (beet or furrow hoes). BRADFORD, Manchester (washing, wringing, and man gling machines). BRAGGINS, Banbury. GREEN, Leeds. BRIDGES, Oxford Street (butter prints and dairy imple- GRIFFIN, MORRIS, and Co., Wolverhampton (manures). CARTER & Co., High Holborn (seeds, grasses, and dried HAYES, JAMES, Elton. flowers). CARTER & DOWNING, City. CHILD, W. J. & T., Hull (millstones and tools). CHILDS BROTHERS, New Oxford-street. LEE and Co., Leicester. LIVSEY and Co., Leeds. SMITH & Co., Glasgow (stable stall and deodorising closet). SMITH & HIGGS, Wolverhampton. SMITH AND TAYLOR, Ipswich. LOOMES, Whittlesea (brick and tile machine and steam engine). SMYTH AND SONS, Peasenhall. LLOYD and SONS, St. Lukes (domestic flour mills). LYNE, near Reading (patent field stile). LYON, Finsbury. MAGGS and HINDLEY, Bourton. MANEUR, City (improved scale). MAPPLEBECK and Lowe, Birmingham. MAYNARD, Whittlesford. MARSHALL and Sons, Gainsboro' (circular-saw benches). MASON, F., Ipswich. MASON, R., Alford. MERRYWEATHER and pumps). SNOWDON, Longford. SOVEREIGN, Ilsington. SPARKE, Norwich. SPIGHT, Brigg (patent horse-hoes). STACY AND SONS, Uxbridge. STANDING, Preston. ST. PANCRAS IRON COMPANY, near King's-cross. and SON, Long Acre (portable fire engines TASKER & SONS, Andover. MORTON, F., and Co., Liverpool. MUNN, Faversham (patent horse hoe). MUSGRAVE BROS., Belfast. MELLARD, J., Rugeley. PICKSLEY, SIMS, AND CO., Leigh, PRIEST AND WOOLNOUGH, Kingston-on-Thames. POSTER & CO., Lincoln (gas apparatus and iron and wood sheds). PRENTICE, THOS., & Co., Stowmarket (manures and asphalted flooring). RROCTOR & RYLAND, Birmingham (manures and combined horse-hoe and manure drill). QUINTIN, Cheltenham (bread-kneading or mincing machines. RANSOMES & SIMS, Ipswich, REYNOLDS, near Soho Square. RICHARDSON, J., Carlisle (corn dressing machine). WILLIAMSON BROS., Kendal. WOOD and TOMLINSON, Altrincham. WRIGHT and SON, Great Bentley (specimens of agricultural seeds and roots). WRIGHT, Boston (stacking or straw-carrying machine). RICHARDSON & DARLEY, Kirton-in-Lindsey (steam traction YOUNG, J. and T., Ayr. engines). RICHES & WATTS, Norwich. RICHMOND & CHANDLER, Manchester, ROBEY & CO., Lincoln. ROBINSON & SON, Barton-on-Humber. ROWLAND, Salisbury (8-horse power portable steam-engine), We are requested to state, that in preparing indices to Implement Catalogue of the Royal Agricultural Society, in connection with the Battersea Park Meeting, Messrs. Henry Clayton and Co.'s Brick and Tile-making Machines, though accidentally omitted in the general index, will be found inserted in the "Index to Miscellaneous Articles," A CHAPTER ON POULTRY-HOUSES. There are a few main rules which we must always bear in mind with respect to housing our poultry. Let the houses be large enough, lofty enough, and not over-crowded. We should allow as much space for poultry as one house, measuring six feet square and seven feet high, to every eight adult fowls, family of ducks, or of larger birds, or large brood of chickens, and the same proportion of space if more are to be housed together. We should never keep different kinds of poultry together, unless in the free range of a large farmyard, and never, under any circumstances, house two kinds together. So the hen-house has good ventilation, it matters little of what it is built. A building of rough board, with windows of perforated zinc, to give plenty of air, so placed as not to throw a draught upon the fowls as they sit at roost, is as good as any other. A correspondent has just written to us: "Will you, or some of your readers, give me directions for building a fowls' house for about thirty hens and half-a-dozen ducks? It must be rat-proof, for I have just had eleven Aylesbury ducklings killed in one night. I should be glad to know the best material aspect, position of nests, light, &c. (SUBSCRIBER.)" The rough boards, which would be good building material under ordinary circumstances, must be changed in "Subscriber's case, and in the case of all persons whose premises are, like his, infested with those terrible pests of the poultry yard-rats. The house might be made of brick; half a brick thick, as it is technically called, would give strength enough. Some localities supply rough stone, which might come cheaper, and would make good walls. If this be considered too expensive for the full height of wall, a depth of two or three feet from the ground would exclude the rats, and the upper part of the house might be made of board. We have found the best material for the roof a layer of the cheapest kind of board (which, however, should be kept until it is seasoned) covered with patent asphalted felt, the price of which is, we think, 8d. per yard, thirty-two inches wide. We will consider the nests next, before the flooring, because the bottom of the nests should be left unfloored. As good nests as any may be made by dividing off a strip, about sixteen inches wide, from one side of the henhouse, with a narrow strip of wood, and separating this into nests with partitions too high for hens to peep over when in the nests. The remainder of the floor of the house may be laid down as follows: The foundation being dug out to the depth of a foot or two, make a good firm foundation with rubble or any convenient commodity of the kind, well rammed down, and spread over it with a bricklayer's trowel a smooth surface of a composition made of lime, sand, and cinder-ash, well worked together. Most handy working-men know how to lay a floor like this. Some may consider it a drawback that the hens will destroy it in course of time; but we reckon this among its merits. It furnishes the fowls with endless amusement when they stand most in need of it; it can be replaced at very small expense; and a new floor every now and then, with thorough lime-washing, is as good as a new house for the fowls. Many good judges prefer a flooring of earth only; but we have found that this becomes tainted, and that houses so floored are apt to get infested with chickens' creepers. We like to have such a text as "Subscriber's " letter to follow, because, while we have the pleasure of serving one, we have also the pleasure of knowing that what suits one suits many, and we have from time to time had many questions on making poultry-houses. If "Subscriber," and others circumstanced as he is with regard to the rats, are unwilling to go to the expense of a brick or stone wall or high foundation, the enemy may be kept at bay by gas-tarring a wooden house often enough. Rule to follow: Always give a new coat before the last is quite dry-namely, once a month, or not so often. We have never heard of rats win their way into a house made of asphalted felt, stretched on a framework of wood, which must likewise be kept tarred. The drawback to this is that fowls will soil their plumage. By all means divide the ducks from the fowls, and do not overcrowd the houses. For aspect, the south; facing the sweet south is decidedly best. Give the fowls also a shrubbery or open shed alongside of the house, so that it too may face the south, offering them a warm place in which to seek shelter, bask, and roll, and they can hardly fail to do well. The question of light was answered when we spoke of the perforated zinc windows. If the houses must be shut up close at night on account of the rats, let there be enough of them: it is easy to cover them in very cold weather.-Field, FENCES. If you take to making fences, it may be as well to know something roughly of the woods usually adopted for the purpose. First, we take the whitethorn, which will suit any soil except a dry gravel, and even that in a wet year. It is raised from seeds or plants, but plants are the quickest way; the seeds lying two years in the ground before they spring, though they grow fast after two or three years. Haws put in a hair bag and soaked in water all winter, then sown in February or March, will come up first year, and will grow better so than any other way. Where sets are scarce, when you fell your underwood, or rather the year before, sow haws and sloes, and you will get lots of plants. The root of whitethorn makes capital boxes and combs. Many being finely veined when they attain to size, are valuable to turners and cabinet makers. This might amuse as well as pay the owner of many a rugged property, which, now given up to the rabbit, the pheasant, and the brood-mare pony, might be so made to yield a better profit. The late Sir James Graham, with characteristic intelligence, had the small wood on his estate, which "used formerly to be burnt to get it out of the way," cut up into bobbins for the Manchester thread manufacturers. "For this purpose beech, hazel, alder, birch, and ash coppice, are all suitable, and are now sold, where the trade is fully established, at 1s. per cubic foot. At a sale lately in that district, a coppice of this description brought £30 an acre, free of all expense of labour, to the owner of the land; and in about fourteen years more, the same coppice will be again ready to cut."-(Caird's English Agriculture, 1850, 1851). Blackthorn is apt to run into the ground, and is not so certain of growing; but the bushes are best adapted, and more lasting, to mend dead fences with; cattle don't crop it so much. It grows in the same soil as the whitethorn, but the richer the mould the better it thrives. Some interplant, but not too thickly, privet, with a view at once to the relief that evergreen gives the eye in winter, and the shelter it affords when other bushes are stripped bare. Holly is slow to start, but makes amends when once up by its thickness, strength, height, and chevaux-de-frise character. Plant in a moist season, autumn or spring, and shade with haulm or straw till they begin to sprout. If any seem to perish, cut them close to the soil, and they will spring up from the very ground, The furze, too-for the sight of a sea of whose golden blossoms upon an English common Linnæus fell thankful on his knees when trained, makes an excellent fence. It is apt to grow thin at the bottom, the lower spines withering and falling off with the growth of the bush, which reserves its verdure for a crown. Hence has it long been used as a cover for the fox, or a verandah to the rabbit burrows. It has been used lately, chopped and bruised, as food for horses. It requires the admixture of salt, or it will bring off their hair. For garden partition, the dwarfed elm makes an elegant and close fence, as does the beech too, which, moreover, has the further claim upon our consideration that it always looks clothed, the old brown leaves adhering until gently supplanted by the new. Of the laurel, yew, espalier, fruit trees, &c., I need not write. The nurseryman, now-a-days, prints in his circular directions so clear, that you will not have the difficulty in acquainting yourself with your need, or of supplying it when known, that the shrewd old Mortimer and his associates had.-Notes on Fields and Cattle, by the Rev. W. Holt Beever. RELATIVE VALUE OF FOOD FOR MILCH COWS. -Several French and German chemists estimate the relative value of several descriptions of food for milch cows as follows: That 100lb. of good hay are worth 200lb. of potatoes; 4601b. of beet-root, with the leaves; 350lb. of Siberian cabbage ; 250lb. of beet-root, without the leaves; 250lb. carrots; 80lb. of clover hay, Spanish trefoil, or vetches; 50lb. of oilcake or colza; 250lb. of pea straw and vetches; 300lb. of barley or oat straw; 400lb. of rye or wheat straw; 25lb. of peas, beans, or vetch seed; 50lb. of oats; or 500lb. of green trefoil, Spanish trefoil, or vetches. MORE LIGHT UNDERGROUND. Science is intended to give us a shield against the ills of life. A people that sits still, and views their calamities as simple "visitations," must have fallen back upon the savage life. An Italian priest, called upon to bless a plot of land, where a few blades of corn were contending with the enemies which usually beset them on ill-managed soil, gave the applicant a sensible rebuke. "It is of no use for me to bless your land," said the priest; "what you want is manure." At one time the people of this country were accustomed to resign themselves piously to flood and drought. In these days of progress such visitations are regarded only as the proper punishment of indolence and slovenly management, since they have been disarmed by the drainer's tool and the two-inch pipe. Science has taught us to catch the lightning and conduct it inocuous to the ground. We shall probably at some future date control storms of wind and rain, and until we have found out the secret necessary for this feat, we continue to insure ourselves against their effects, so that their fury, instead of being discharged with crushing force upon the shield of one individual, is received harmlessly upon the united shields of the many. We are continually finding out that we are not the sport of unseen powers to the extent we once held to be the case, or in the manner the peasants of Norway and Sweden believe themselves to be. We have learned that we need not propitiate the wind or the rain, the lightning or the frost, the fever or the fire. The Almighty has surrounded us by certain conditions, subversive of life, not that we should be victimized, but that, having the will, we should rise superior to them, and that in the act of battling with circumstances, we should undergo that discipline which is necessary to the full development of our manhood. We are superior to the elements around us. At one age or another man has regarded himself as the creature of circumstances; but experience has tanght in so many cases that he is the master of circumstances, that he may well arrive at the conclusion that he is the master of all circumstances. As to "inevitable laws," there are very few such straight lines to constrain us, save our duty to the Great Maker, and for the rest laws are finite, and retain their supremacy only so long as human experience retains its present scope; to-morrow may change all, and either give us a new view which may result in a new law, and the abrogation of an old one, or such a view as shall change the application of the old law. assistance in this respect than M. Boussingault. From the laboratory of that most persevering of experimentalists they have from time to time received highly valuable contributions to scientific discovery. Never has he given a record of experiments there conducted of greater interest than those recently published under the title Agronomie, Chemie Agricole et Physiologie. He has been directing his attention to the composition of the air contained in the soil, to the absorptive properties of arable land, to an estimation of what amount, separately, of ammonia and nitric acid is to be found in water, rain, snow, dew, and mist. The immense importance of such inquiries upon the future of agriculture, as tending to correct the present imperfect theories of manuring, must be apparent to any one whose mind is alive to the present state of the question. It is usual to insist upon the presence of ammonia as food for the growing crop; but little is known as to the circumstances under which it is presented most advantageously. If it be allowed-and this will not now be disputedthat plants grow only by addition of cells, and that these cells, consisting of two parts, owe their outer part or protection to the union of carbon and water, or its elements, and their inner part to ammonia, or its elements, nitrogen and hydrogen, it is obviously important to discover the manure in which nature works to supply this highly vitalized internal membrane, that we may learn how best to assist her. Although the elements of ammonia are plentiful in the air, hydrogen being liberated by the decomposition of water to unite with nitrogen, M. Boussingault's experiments have brought him to the conclusion that the cell is not supplied with it directly from the atmosphere. Ammonia must be accounted for from elsewhere. In the course of his researches he says, that he found the seed to be a perfect storehouse of nitrogen and phosphorus, and of all the characteristic materials of the vegetable species whose seed it is. In virtue of the existence in it the seed grew in a chemically pure air and barren soil, and although fed only with pure water, developed into a perfect plant, which flowered and ripened seeds with no more nitrogen than was in the seed to begin with. It is well to remember that there is usually from five to six per cent. of nitrogen in the seed, while in the entire plant there is one per cent. The experiments he made upon fertile soils abound with practical suggestions. As with the atmosphere so The farmer who, next to the sailor, seemed to be the with the soil: although four-fifths of its bulk is nimost helpless and exposed of human creatures, has of trogen, plants can appropriate nothing from the atlate years gained considerably in this sense of master-mosphere save a few stray particles of ammonia floatship. While he has been busy in producing food, his friend the chemist has been unremitting in his attention to certain influences which for ever were opposing his efforts. These which were represented as antagonisms, and so impersonated, were discovered rather to be negative than positive influences: influences arising rather out of the indolence of man than such as specially aroused themselves to counteract his inactivity. Sir Humphry Davy, Liebig, Lawes, and Gilbert, have each shown that nothing is wanted to save farmers from the losses to which they have been exposed, but such a knowledge of the agencies around them as shall enable them to work with them, to subject them to their will, and to use them for the production of desired results. Perhaps no chemist has given the farmers more ing in it. In a fertile soil, similarly, there may be 96-100ths of nitrogen, "locked up from the plant in organic compounds, which the plant cannot decompose." Boussingault very justly says, on this evidence, that analyses of soils and manures, detailing the quantity of this constituent or of that, afford information really of little value to the farmer, who must seek to know the conditions in which they are found there, whether free or in bondage. He comes to the conclusion that the only sources of nitrogen, and those from whence the vegetable cell is composed, are ammoniacal salts and nitrates. Phosphates, he insists, are indispensable in every case, and nitrogenous matter is also needful as a companion to the nitrate. nitrate is preferable to an ammoniacal salt, inasmuch as nitrogen appears to be fully assimilable by plants, "A and being more fixed is less likely to be lost than ammoniacal salts, all of which are more or less volatile." We are scarcely aware how much depends upon carbon, and how mportant it is for a sufficient quantity to remain free to combine with and fix the ammoniacal salts and nitrates in the tissues of the growing plants. Unless it is at liberty to perform this good office, such elements as these may exist to repletion in the soil without benefit to the plant. Carbon, however, serves a more important purpose still. As food for plants, to whose existence it is essential, it can only become assimilated and combined with oxygen, that is as carbonic acid. Boussingault then details some most interesting experiments suggested by this fact, to find the quantity of carbonic acid which exists in the air of the soil. One set of experiments he devised to prove the quantity of air held by soils of various kinds; another to ascertain the quality of that air. His evidence and substance with regard to the first set is as follows: The average for fair soils may be stated at 400 cubic yards per acre, taken at a depth of 14 inches; the entire volume of the acre taken to this depth is equal to 1,750 cubic yards; so that in such a soil the contained air is about a quarter of the density which it is in the superincumbent atmosphere. Soils very rich in humus and recently manured gave the largest quantity of unfixed air, sands and clays the least. With respect to quality, the experimenter found more carbonic acid in the air of the soil than in the atmosphere. In the latter it is usual to allow 4 parts carbonic acid in 10,000 atmospheric air; but a soil rich in humus contained 974 in 10,000, the soil of a meadow contained 179, and no soil, according to his experience, run short of 100 parts. Striking an average, the air contained in one acre of arable land, 14 inches deep, equalled 1,750 cubic yards; soil manured a year previously contained as much carbonic acid as is found in 9,446 cubic yards of the atmosphere; so that the acre of soil lately manured contains as much as there may be estimated in 60 acres of the atmosphere 14 inches deep. Before referring to the conclusions deduced from such premises, there yet remains one point of special interest elucidated by these investigations. In comparing the oxygen of the air confined in the soil with that in the atmosphere, it was found that the latter is always deficient in this busy-body constituent by nearly the same quantity as goes to combine with carbon to produce car bonic acid. It is also not irrational to suppose that oxygen, beyond burning the carbon of the organic remains in the soil, unites also with the free hydrogen to be found there, and thus ministers to the wants of the rootlets in the matter of water as well as of carbonic acid. This service is more important than at first it appears to be; since were carbon and oxygen to combine in the presence of the nascent hydrogen-that is to say, were there not sufficient members of the oxygen family to ally with those of the carbon family on the one hand, and the hydrogen family on the other-the unallied members of the hydrogen family, in their single life, might be productive of considerable damage. If that hydrogen can be utilized as water, all is well; but if left alone, it becomes the victim of other bad spirits, and produces such combinations as formic acid, humic acid, and acetic acid, which so acting are destructive of life. For the agriculturist, there is but one practical conclusion for all this. He will readily infer that the soil, in order to fertility, must contain a notable quantity of organic matter, which the atmosphere, by a process of slow combustion, may transfer into carbonic acid and water, and ultimately into nitrates and ammoniacal salts. "Organic matters, when submitted to the united influence of air, moisture, and a suitable temperature, give rise to carbonic acid and water; and if nitrogenous, to ammonia. When buried in a soil sufficiently open, their combustion is so obvious that, in warm climates, it may happen at the end of some years that a clean soil, rich in humus, becomes so poor as to be unable to give a crop without the application of manure, Thus mould, humus, and all the last terms of the putrefaction of vegetable substances, are so many sources which emit carbonic acid; and it is beyond doubt that an important part of the efficacy of manures of organic origin ought to be attributed to this remission, whether it be that the acid gas absorbed by the roots runs the course of the organism of the plant, or that, turned into the surrounding atmosphere, the light decomposes it under the influence of the leaves which assimilate the carbon." It is very easy to regard, therefore, every particle of humus in the soil as "a focus from whence carbonic acid gas is constantly emanating" to modify that atmosphere which descends from above, and fit it for its mission to the roots which pervade the seed-bed in search of support for the wondrous development of woody fibre, green leaf, tender blossom, and perfected seed. F. R. S. THE AGRICULTURE OF NORWAY. catalogue, to the colonial catalogues of Canada and Nova Scotia, and of the various Australian colonies, which are all far superior to the meagre official industrial catalogue, both in solid information and in the style of getting up. Among the benefits resulting from the International | logue, and the Algerian catalogue; to the Zollverein Exhibition, not the least will be the large amount of practical statistical and general information connected with the resources, agricultural products, and statistics of various countries that will be diffused. Foreign countries, especially, have gone into this matter with an energy, spirit, and desire to promulgate information Many of these, with other special issues circulated in respecting their several industries which put our own some of the foreign courts, will furnish useful details exertions to shame. While the British catalogue is a for future reference, and upon these we shall draw for bare enumeration of exhibitors and objects, compiled the information of our readers who may not have the in the most terse and useless style, the foreign and facilities of obtaining them, nor be able to avail themcolonial catalogues are, for the most part, full of valu- selves of them in the language in which are published. able recent information, which may be sought for in We take for present notice a synopsis of the vegetable vain elsewhere. In illustration of this, we may point products of Norway, by D. F. C. Schubeler, printed to the admirable catalogues of the Austrian collection at the expense of the Norwegian Government, which (in English), full of valuable statistical and descriptive contains many curious and important facts respecting information; to the French and Belgian catalogues (in the agriculture of a high northern country, about which French); to that of the collective French colonial cata-comparatively little is known. |