THE PROPERTY OF MR. JOHN WARD, OF EAST MERSEN, NEAR COLCHESTER, ESSEX. The subject of our plate was bred by the late Henry Parsons, Esq., of Stoke-by-Nayland. He was got by the noted horse" Champion," the property of Mr. William Hern, of Emsett Hall, near Hadleigh, Suffolk, out of a pure Suffolk mare, and was never exhibited except at the meeting of the Royal Agricultural Society of England, held at Gloucester, in July, 1853, where the first prize of Twenty Sovereigns was awarded to him. PLATE II. A PEN OF THREE PIGS, THE PROPERTY OF HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS PRINCE ALBERT, For which the first prize of Ten Sovereigns and the Gold and Silver Medals were awarded at the Smithfield Club Cattle Show, held in December. 1853. The progress of our inquiries with regard to turnip manures is certainly cheering. Our practical knowledge and our chemical researches still seem to go hand-in-hand. Whilst the farmer is experimentalizing in his field, regardless of theory, and justly despising mere fluent chemical verbiage, the man of science is as carefully and as laboriously at work in his study and in his laboratory. As we are now close approaching the season when all our knowledge with regard to the growth of turnips may be profitably rendered available, let us travel together over a few of those fields of inquiry which eminent practical farmers, and as able chemists, have recently traversed. The labours of the Scotch farmers' clubs are here again most valuable: they are commonly founded upon some useful system; they are ever based upon the economy of the manure, to its profit to the farmer; and to its consequent commercial value to the community at large. These facts are evidenced in the two most recent reports on the growth of turnips which I have seen, those by the Morayshire, and Lockerby farmers' clubs-districts which the English farmer will remember are, in common with a large portion of Scotland, peculiarly well adapted to the growth of the turnip crop. It is quite true that in the northern portion of our island the climate aids the agriculturists of Scotland to produce much larger crops of turnips than we can commonly expect in England; but Nature's boon in this great respect does not make the excellent Scotch farmers rest satisfied with U their fine crops: they still labour to increase their | English 4,840), each being manured with 15 cubic yards of farm-yard manure, 2 4-5th cwts. of Peruvian guano, and 14 bush. of dissolved bones : produce; for they well feel that there is hardly a limit to the fruitfulness of the soil. The report of the Morayshire Farmers' Club gives the results of the trials on twenty-five farms in the county of Moray, during the season of 1853-4; these being chiefly directed to the economy of using (pretty generally, in addition to from 10 to 25 cubic yards of farm-yard manure) various artificial dressings (Trans. High. Soc., 1854, p. 245). The manures employed were chiefly Peruvian guano, superphosphate of lime, and bones; the results were decidedly in favour of the use of these fertilizers. The average produce of all these twenty-five farms were found to be, per imperial acre, in 1853-4 : 18 2 long red 19 12 Mangold wurzel, golden.. "The table shows" (the members of this intelligent club add)" that yearly the quantity of extra manure given is on the increase, and confirms the practice, which is becoming every year more general, of giving bones, either raw or dissolved, along with guano and dung. The great crops at Hardgrave for several years brought this under notice; and the large weights of all sorts at Dalfibble, Shaw, and Barnsdale (the two latter at an elevation of 500 feet, and second-rate quality of soil), which appear in the tables of this year, may extend still more the practice of applying bones in both forms." There appears to be little doubt but that for rootcrops, all those artificial fertilizers are to be preferred which abound in phosphate of lime; not but that it is desirable to have in all these a considerable portion of nitrogenous matters. Ilere the researches of the man of science are again invaluable to agriculture; and much has, within these last few months, been accomplished in this way. Great advances, indeed, have been recently made towards a better understanding of the theory of manures. If any young farmer doubts the advantages of treading cautiously in all practical experiments-looking steadily to Nature's lessons, but not unmindful of her truths developed by the chemist-if he has any such doubts, let him contrast the vague experiments of Arthur Young, and of the farmers who were his contemporaries, with the similar practical inquiries of the modern agriculturist. It is now about three-quarters of a century since the ardent and enthusiastic Arthur Young was employed upon some trials with manures," in order to discover," as he gravely tells us (Annals of Agriculture, vol. i. p. 139), "what would be the effect of bodies greatly charged with phlogiston" (phlogiston was the name given to an imaginary substance of that day by those who thought that mere words were useful as an explanation of unknown facts). These experiments, were commenced in 1779; he carried on his trials chiefly in small garden-pots of earth for a lengthened period, manuring with all kinds of substances. Thus we find him using (ibid, p. 151) charcoal powder, |