India in 1887 as seen by Robert Wallace / [Robert Wallace].

  • Robert Wallace
Date:
1888
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: India in 1887 as seen by Robert Wallace / [Robert Wallace]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    183/550 (page 97)
    seen mentioned is, that dung stored in a climate such as India—unless very special precautions are taken to keep it sufficiently moist on the one hand, or from becoming too wet on the other—will not ferment properly. Fermentation. Dung requires not only to be a good mateiial, containing rich manurial substances in a crude form to bc^i n with, but it must be properly kept, to enable fermentation to do the work of piepaiing it for plant food. This would require special care and special knowledge where, at present in India, there is total ignorance. In the dry weather it dries up almost immediately, and in the rains it is soaked—consequently a proper fermentation cannot take place at either period. The Rothamsted Experiments have shown us that some of the nitrogen—by far the most valuable ingredient in dung—most probably escapes in the form of worthless, free nitrogen.1 The question as to how much more nitro- gen escapes in the free and valueless condition when manure is properly fermenting than when it is not doing so, is one which only chemical experiments can solve ; but it is a question which, if answered, would have a bearing of vast importance in the future of Indian agriculture.2 The 1 Since the above was written my remarks have been strongly corroborated and my ideas relating to the decay of dung extended in a book—The Rotham- sted Experiments, by Professor Fream, B.Sc. Lond. Published by Cox The Field office. It gives a concise and reliable account of the elaborate field experiments which have been conducted with so much care and ability for over forty years by Sir J. B. Lawes and Dr Gilbert, and which, when made known, wdl be found invaluable to the student of Nature alike in India and England. Fream says, page 197—“Neither with the wheat, the barley, nor the mixed (pasture) herbage was there more than from 10 to 15 per cent, of the nitrogen supplied in the farmyard manure, recovered in the increase of crop during the (twenty) years of its application.” After pointing out (pace 201) that there is a loss of nitrogen from land by under drainage he says-“A considerable further loss is probably due to decomposition of the nitrogenous organic matter within the soil and evolution as free nitrogen.” - In the Journal of the Chemical Society (Feb. 18S8), No. ccciii. page 185, L