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to the Firft Volume 617

ews, and fprouts up: that which lies deeper will not germinate till a fhower of

‘rain comes. At harveft time one half of the farmer’s crop would be thelled before the other would be ripe. The year before, the feed-time was dropping as the farmers call it, or he fhould not haye worked his land fo much about.

Lo be read after Line 31, Page 575-—In oppofition to an opinion ftated by Mr. icerrich, that* out of a coomb of difcoloured barley, more than two buthels will not in moft inftances work on the malting floor;” and that he is of opinion, it cannot ‘be relied upon for feed,* as the feeds do not vegetate better in the ground than they do upon the floor: an intelligent Norfolk farmer determined to try the vege- tative powers of barley in different tints of difcoloration; and found, as he expected, that the mere circumftance of difcoloration had nothing to do with

germination when the feed is committed to the ground. If the corculum, the {peck of vitality, be not injured, the feed, he believes, will invariably germinate: the cotyledons are merely organs of nutrition, which convey the oily: farinaceous matter of which they are compofed, to the infant plant: if the nutritious fubftance be liberally communicated, which we{uppofe to be the cafe when the cotyledons are large, plump and firm, the plant, it is obvious, will thrive better and more rapidly, than when the cotyledons, fhrunk and fhrivelled, difiribute a parfimonious mucilage. Still, however, the deficiency of natural nourifhment in this latter cafe may, he is perfuaded, be in a great meafure fupplied by imparting an additional fecundity to the foil. He feleGed from a heap of barley, which lay in his barn, twenty kernels, the moft thin and meagre which he could find; this was during the fevereft part of winter. He planted them in fome very rich mould, and kept the pot in his filudy; where every one of them germinated, tardily indeed at firft, but the radical fibres foon foread, and the plants grew luxuriantly. In his garden he

afterwards planted fome of the blackeft barley he could find, a large proportion of which grew, and was healthy: the corculum of fome few kernels had been injured,

probably rotted by exceflive rains, and thofe kernels made no effort to germinate.

In contradiction of the fecond pofition, he picked from the floor of a neighbour- ing maltfter fixty kernels of barley, which having been in the heap(as he was aflured by him) for nineteen days, had refufed to malt. He told him. perha

the procefs of

ps truly, that thofe kernels would certainly not vegetate, however long they remained cn his floor. He planted them in his garden: and out of fixty, forty-five grew as rapidly and vigoroufly as he ever faw barley in his life. In fhort, it is evident that warmth

and moifture, however cflential to germination, are not of themfelves fufficient to

a fice SRE ieee a eae Pe ie 7 RSG