Fully sensible of my inability to do justice to this important subject, I yet hope (if you do me the honour to publish my letter) that my remarks may induce scientific men to consider it; for it appears unaccountable to me that hitherto they seem to have thought it unworthy of their attention.

P.S.—­There is still time to try the experiment during the present season.  If any gentleman wishes to try the short-strawed Chilian wheat, I shall be glad to give him a sample of it for the purpose of cross-breeding.  Samples were sent to Mr. H. Briggs, Mr. Raynbird, and Mr. Stevenson, Stockport.

* * * * *

January 27th, 1848.

To the Editor of the “Agricultural Gazette.”

You invite persons who have grown good crops of grain or turnips to forward you the particulars.  I therefore enclose you an account of an attempt which I made to grow wheat on the same land year after year, that account reaching to the fourth white crop in 1844.  As I still continue the experiment, I shall be in a position to continue the account up to the present time (as I am now threshing out the last year’s crop), and will send it to you if you think it worthy of insertion in the “Agricultural Gazette.”

If the account I now send is not worth inserting, please to send it to your correspondent A. W., who doubted whether there were authenticated instances of land producing eighty, seventy, or even fifty bushels to the acre.

I attribute my success in growing wheat to the use of silicate of soda, and yet, singularly enough, until now I have been unable to induce anyone else to try it.  This season, however, several persons have applied to me to procure it for them.  Among them is the talented editor of the “Liverpool Times,” whose farm at Barton Moss shows what good management will accomplish on very unpromising soils.  If, as I hope will be the case, the silicate of soda should supply to peat its greatest deficiency, no one will more readily discover it than Mr. Baines.

In the use of silicates of soda and potash, one precaution is very necessary, namely, that you really have a soluble silicate, not a mere mechanical mixture of ground flint and alkali.  This is a very different thing, and one which, if it be not carefully guarded against, will lead to nothing but disappointment.

Again, the silicate of soda may be properly made, in the first instance, but in a long exposure to the atmosphere, the soda attracts carbonic acid, and is liberated from the silex, and this has disappointed my expectation more than once.

Again, though I consider it desirable to defer the application of soluble silicates until vegetation has made a fair start 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 plant began to send up suckers from the roots, and the crop was seriously injured by it; but this was in an exceedingly dry spring, and may not happen again for many years.