The Wheat Plant: Its Origin, Culture, Growth, Development, Composition, Varieties, Diseases, Etc., Etc.: Together with a Few Remarks on Book

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1860 Excerpt: ...as before, and the same amount of produce would have been obtained as in the preceding year. If after each crop, the straw is always returned in this manner to the field, the further result then is, an inequality in the composition of the active constituents of the soil. We have assumed that our field contained the mineral matters of the whole wheat plant in the right proportions for the formation of straw, leaves and grain. By leaving the strawconstituents in the soil, while those of the grain were constantly removed, an increase of the former took place, when compared with the proportion of grain-constituents still remaining in the field. The field retained its productiveness for straw, but the conditions for the formation of grain decreased. The consequence of this inequality is an unequal development of the whole plant. So long as the soil contained and supplied, in the proper proportions, all the necessary mineral matters for the uniform growth of all parts of the plant, the quality of the seed and the proportion between straw and grain in the diminishing crops remained uniform and unaltered. But in proportion as the conditions for the formation of straw and leaves became more favorable, so did the quality of the teed deteriorate as its quantity diminished. The sign of this inequality in the composition of the soil, a3 a consequence of cultivation, is the diminution in weight of the bushel of corn. While at first a certain portion of the constituents of the returned straw (phosphoric acid, potash, magnesia) was expended in the formation of grain, at a later period the reverse of this takes place, and demands are then made on the grain-constituents (phosphoric acid, potash, magnesia) for the formation of straw. We may imagine that when there exists in a...