ate,
and not a mere mechanical mixture of ground flint and soda: this
is a very different thing, and one, if it be not carefully guarded
against, which will lead to nothing but disappointment. Again, the
silicate may be properly made in the first place, but in a long
exposure to the atmosphere the soda attracts carbonic acid, and
the soda is liberated, and this has defeated my expectations more
than once. Again, though I consider it desirable to defer the
application of it until vegetation has fairly started in the
spring, yet, in one instance, I delayed the application of it so
long, that there was not moisture to dissolve it until the end of
June, and then the wheat began to shoot afresh from the roots and
the crop was seriously injured by it: but this was in an
exceedingly dry spring, and might not happen again for many years.

* * * * *

_To the same._

LOW MOOR, _18th December_, 1845.

SIR,--I promised to communicate to you the results of my attempt
to grow wheat on the same land year after year, this being the
fourth crop of wheat (the fifth white crop) grown in successive
years on the same soil, and though I consider the crop an
indifferent one, I don't think the failure ought in any degree to
be attributed to the over-cropping, but to the wetness and
coldness of the season, as well as other untoward circumstances
hereafter to be mentioned.

In a former letter of mine of the 12th October, 1844--which was
published in the "Guardian" a few days after--I gave an account of
the crop of 1844, which was a very good one, being fifty bushels
to the acre throughout the field, and as much as fifty-two bushels
in the best part of it. This I considered so satisfactory that I
had the field again ploughed up and sowed with wheat on the 9th
October, 1844, and it is to the results of this crop that I wish
to call your attention. As remarked in my former letter, the field
was subsoil ploughed in the autumn of 1843, and this subsoiling
was carried to such a depth that most of the drains in the field
were more or less injured by it; and although this did no injury
to the crop of 1844, owing to the very dry season, yet when the
rain came in the winter of 1844, the want of drainage was found to
be very prejudicial, and in the wet places large patches of the
young wheat went off altogether, and there was a great deficiency
of roots in many parts of the field; the long continuance of frost
and after that the ungenial weather w